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Last Updated on January 20, 2024 by Work In My Pajamas
All kinds of professionals have home offices. Salaried workers, freelancers, and people who exclusively telecommute rely on their home offices to be the perfect sanctuary of productivity. If your home office isn’t everything you’ve dreamed it to be, you might need to make some changes or improvements. You’re the boss in your home office, and it’s time to take complete control to make that office perfect.
In This Post:
1. There Are Too Many Distractions
If you’ve turned the corner of your living room into a home office, you might not be able to focus on your job. This is especially true if you have children or if you live with other people. They want to watch TV, or listen to music. They want to sit on the couch and have conversations. All the while, you’re just a short stroll away trying to work. You need to have as many walls as possible. If you need to, set up a few partitions to keep distractions from flooding in.
2. Things Are Cluttered
If your office isn’t very large and you have a lot of documents to hang onto, you might not have enough room to move around. Throw away the things you don’t need, especially if they’re bulky, and make arrangements for what you need to keep. If you don’t have enough room in other areas of your home, you can always turn to a sharing community site like Spacer. It’s a little more budget friendly than purchasing an entire storage unit, especially if you don’t have a ton of stuff to store.
3. Your Organizational System Isn’t Working
You probably have a lot of shelves and cabinets. You need your computer, your printer, and all of your office supplies. You have binders full of paperwork you need for work, and you have stuff all over the place. When your organizational system isn’t working, focus on the inside of your drawers. Put as much stuff away as possible – your desktop will be a lot easier to navigate. Instead of several short shelves or cases, opt for tall ones. Using the height of the room to organize your supplies will keep things looking clean.
4. You Don’t Love the Environment
Your office should be decorated just like any other area of your home. You have more freedom in the process than you would if you worked in a building owned by someone else. If you left your walls white and you don’t have any personal embellishments, your environment is probably stifling the creativity you need to be an innovative professional. Paint your walls. Get some fresh flowers or plants for your windowsills. You need to be comfortable while you work if you want to do your best.
5. You Don’t Feel Productive There
A lot of people who work from home find that many lines are blurred. You’re thinking about your laundry or unloading the dishwasher when you should be reviewing and signing documents. It’s hard to get a lot of work done when there are things around the house that need to be taken care of. Create a strict schedule for yourself. Sit down at your desk to work and don’t do any housework until you’ve called it a day. Learning how to work from home while separating work life from home life can be challenging, but you have the ability to make the arrangements that will allow you to make that separation on your own terms.
Your home office should be a place where you truly feel that you can do your best. At the end of the day, it’s important to remember that you have complete control over that environment and you’re free to do whatever you need to do to make that space work for you.
Interesting post. Although, at least for the moment, I don’t work for myself – I do work from home often. I must admit, I like your little tips in this post. I think I may well try 2 or 3 to see if they work for me. Thanks for the post.