So, it becomes crucial for those who work permanently from home to get creative. How can you make the most of your home office without taking over your small household? There’s no perfect off-the-shelf solution. But there are some handy tips that can smooth out a lot of challenges. 

Embrace multipurpose furniture

This one is a no-brainer. When space is at a premium, every piece of furniture needs to pull double duty. You can’t afford to have pieces of furniture that serve only one function, because they instantly become a waste of space the moment you are not using them. 

Look for multipurpose furniture pieces that can serve as both office essentials and space-saving solutions. For example, a small cube storage can become a stool too. Similarly, cube shelves, such as IKEA’s collection can act as shelving units and also the legs of your desk. So, you want to look beyond the appearances to focus on pieces that can tick multiple boxes at once. 

Utilize vertical storage

A small space can turn productive and organized as long as you can find ways to create a tidy working area. When horizontal space is limited, think vertically! 

There are often missed opportunities to utilize wall space for storage, such as installing floating shelves or wall-mounted organizers above your desk. This is especially useful for improved home offices in tidy spaces, such as a nook in the lounge or the understairs area. Once you get creative with your storage solutions, you can make the most of every inch of available space.

Consider relocating outside

If indoor space is truly limited, consider taking your office outdoors. A garden office pod or a small backyard shed can provide a peaceful and secluded workspace away from the distractions of the main household. 

Granted, you will need to count with the addition of electricity and Wi-Fi. But these outdoor workspaces can offer all the amenities of a traditional home office without taking up valuable space inside your home. 

Furthermore, to ensure your outdoor office remains functional year-round, especially in areas prone to outages or extreme weather, a reliable backup power source is often essential. In this case, a generator can keep your devices running smoothly and your work uninterrupted. Additionally, regularly hiring Fort McMurray generator repair and maintenance services (or similar providers in your area) will help ensure your power supply remains dependable, so your productivity isn’t left in the dark.

Compromise with coworking spaces

Sometimes, despite your best efforts, there simply isn’t enough space to create a dedicated home office. In these cases, consider compromising by alternating between working from home and utilizing coworking spaces. 

Coworking spaces offer all the benefits of a traditional office environment while being suitable for the flexible work style of remote professionals. 

You can choose to spend a few days a week at a coworking space, which can help keep your small household clutter-free while still enjoying the convenience of working remotely.

There is no denying that creating a home office in a small household requires creativity, flexibility, and a willingness to think outside the box. And despite all this, it may still not work within your home, especially if you’re not the only person working from home in your household. But the moment you start thinking outside the box, you can safely move the home office outside your home.

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For folks like us, workspace becomes critical to our productivity. Both my husband and are very ordered and organized. We cannot work in clutter and need our space to be creative. More importantly our space has to bear our personality whether it be artsy, elegant yet minimalistic like me or hardcore, reflective and precise like him.

Keeping all of this in mind. We decided we needed to re-decorate the office. The clincher was to do it on a low budget, making use of what was already in the house as much as possible.  And that’s where creativity, resourcefulness and confidence comes in. Here are a few ideas we put into reality and which we hope will inspire you when you decide to re-decorate and re-organize your workspace. Remember to get all your electrical grounding checked if doing any proper DIY to prevent house fires and stop electrical faults happening. 

Utility is key!

Get rid of the clutter. Make sure you only have what you absolutely need taking up space in your home office. Utility means functionality to me, and that’s where I think a lot of us make trade-offs, having to sacrifice creativity and art to functionality. But I didn’t and here’s how:

• • Desk: For us, this meant having just one desk instead of 2. The way to get around seating issues is to find a desk that allows for leg space on at least 2 sides if not all the way around. (aha! Now you get it.)
  • Calendars: The world may have gone digital, but I still use the traditional calendar. It’s convenient and taking up wall space is always better than taking up desk space when you already have a small desk to begin with. It’s also artsy. What do I mean? Have you ever tried taking a Video Gamer’s calendar (in our case it was Halo that blended perfectly well with the rest of the office theme) and hanging it to look like a poster? Try it. High chance you’ll love it!

• Coasters: I get through my day with at least 3 caffeine breaks so instead of having dull boring coasters, I picked up a set of 4 Star Wars’ coasters at Target (on clearance) with a black and white Storm Trooper theme to match the black and white casing of my husband’s gaming PC in the office. Needless to say the coaster is theme appropriate, does it’s job and when it’s not, it still makes for an interesting piece of art!

Space & Color

Ours is a small workspace. I discovered however, that if you invest in white furniture and add some mirrors to the mix, it can do wonders. That’s why we chose an unused 3.5 ft X 2 ft vanity mirror to add a sense of space and depth to the room.

If you have to have color, stick to 1 or 2 only and play around with shades of the same color rather than use a third. For us this was red and blue and the theme runs through the posters and wall art in the office.

Be sure to pick up pieces from reputable places such as Weaver Furniture Barn. No matter what ideas you have floating around in your head you don’t want subpar pieces in your office. It should be a cozy space that fosters productivity, so when selecting pieces it is important to bear this in mind.

The biggest value add to the office however, has been this sturdy white storage cube organizer we recently purchased online at Walmart. It is not only useful, acting as a bookshelf, curio display shelf and storage (for all the ugly stuff in the office people don’t want you to see. Lol) but lends modernity to the room. Ours may look like one piece but is actually 2 single cubes (bought separately) and mounted on the lower 3- piece cube. I went a step further and added a white magazine/file holder (which had I lying around the house) to the ensemble which may not even be noticeable because it blends in so well. Here’s another tip: everything is art. Be attentive to odds and ends around the house , which if paired well with other items can turn into a beautiful utility and would definitely save you a trip to the store.

Lighting, like mirrors can add beauty and space to a room. A workspace definitely needs this. But ceiling lights can be harsh sometimes, kill the aesthetics of the room and be very unnerving for people trying to work. A soft light on the other hand can be relaxing, help your focus and give you that much needed break to meet deadlines. We added medium voltage contemporary, light-weight lamps to the room. I also put together a decorative light bowl, using a spare glass bowl, LED lights and some old potpourri fill ups I no longer need. If you don’t have potpourri, you can use candles, decorative stones or shells. Run with your imagination here

Reflect your personality

This is undoubtedly the most important part of decorating your home office. It’s your office and must reflect your personality. As a child, like most boys, my husband collected many action figures from Star Trek, Spawn, Pokemon, GI Joe, etc. So it was no surprise that when I came across a ton of them in the basement and began to organize his collection, he suggested we use a few to mount in the office. If action figures was his thing, the light bowls were mine and what goes better with light than greenery, so I added a few (fake) indoor table plants. It makes the room more aesthetics. And who doesn’t have stickers and cutouts, too interesting to get rid of, but also too small to do anything meaningful with? I just took a few interesting high quality curated stickers a client had given my husband to sample, mounted them on white paper (kind of like a collage) and framed them in a small desk frame. My husband loves it and says it motivates him to ‘do more’ and ‘keep it simple’ at work because that’s exactly what the stickers say.

My husband and I are proud of our new home office and the short time we took to get it done. It’s our space and one of the prettiest rooms in the house, decorated on a low-cost budget. Breathing new life into old space isn’t difficult to do and if we can do it, so could you!

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