The following contribution is from another author.
When it comes to running your home, the main rooms that come to mind are the kitchen, bathroom, living room, and bedroom… but what about that room in the back of the house that just houses all the miscellaneous junk your family has accumulated? Have you ever thought about taking that vacant room and turning it into a home office?
In the past, not too many people thought about home offices because they have their Monday through Friday, 9 to 5 job that they work. These days, more and more people are ditching those routine jobs and opting to work for themselves from home… If you had the opportunity to be your own boss, wouldn’t you take it? Yes! And with that opportunity, you’d need a proper work area in your home to be based out of, meaning, you would need to set yourself up a proper home office.
A Home With Purpose
As everyone knows, each room in a home serves a purpose but it’s up to you to create a home that serves you. Your kitchen is where food is prepared and cooked, your bathroom is where you go to bathe and relieve yourself, and your bedroom is where you go to rest and relax. Creating a home with rooms that serve its purpose is where we all mess up.
The bedroom is where we go to rest and relax, right? Yes, but we constantly bring our plate filled with pizza slices and eat in bed. Our kitchen is made for preparing and cooking food, right? Yes, but we still go in the kitchen and utilize our kitchen table as a place to house bills and mail… that’s why people eat in their bedrooms…
Your home office can easily become a sanctuary for empty cups, pizza boxes, and crumbs. Don’t let that happen. If you are going to be running your business online from home, there absolutely needs to be boundaries. Your home office should look as professional as it would if you were going into an office building. That will help you maintain the professionalism of a home office look.
The Home Office Elements
The Perfect Location
If you don’t have a specific room picked out for your home office, you need to pick out a room that will best serve its purpose. It can be any room you choose as long as it’s in an area of the home that will allow you to focus and not be distracted by family members or guests. You could even convert your garage into a home office…if you’re willing to pay the costs of renovating.
Mood-Boosting Paint Color
The color you choose to paint your office can play a major part in how productive you will be while working. The color can affect how much work you do… it can even determine how long you want to stay in that room. This “color effect” is actually linked with color psychology.
There are colors that can make you feel calm and relaxed, yet there are colors that can do the exact opposite and make you feel anxious or angry. Verywellmind.com breaks down the influence behind the colors and the emotions they evoke. It talks about how color is a very important communication tool and how it can be an influence on your mood and your reaction to certain things.
Take a look at some colors that would be good to put in your office and some colors that you need to avoid putting in your office. Some of the colors do overlap in the emotions they evoke; you just have to determine which color will work best in your design scheme and just see how you feel about it.
Colors for the Office
- White- peacefulness
- Purple- wealth
- Black- power
- Blue- productivity
- Yellow- energy
Colors Not for the Office
- Black- unhappiness
- Red- anger
- Green- envy
- Pink- romance (your office is to work, not play)
Good-Quality Office Desk
Your office desk is the only piece of furniture that makes the room be considered as an office… it’s what makes the room serve its purpose, and without it, that room would be just like any other room in your home. So a good quality desk will be much needed in your home office.
The cool thing about desks now is that they don’t come in one-size-fits-all styles. There are desks that are ergonomically designed to meet your needs. That aspect is very important, especially if you will be spending a lot of time there. They even have sit-to-stand desks that allow you to work standing up when you’ve been sitting too long and need to stretch your legs.
Comfortable Desk Chair
Your desk chair is another important aspect of your home office. In fact, it might actually be more important than the desk! An office chair also plays a huge role in how productive you will be when working in your office.
You’re going to be sitting in it for hours at a time running your business so you want something that will be comfortable. A lot of people don’t take comfort into consideration when picking out desk chairs… they go for “the look.”
What will the chair look like with the desk? The look of an office chair is certainly important but not as important as the comfort it brings. You might be pulling an all-nighter to get things done and when you get up, you’re stiff as a board… nobody wants to feel that. Luckily there are chairs out there that are just as nice looking as they are comfortable… you just have to look.
Organization System
The key to a productive office is to have a proper organization system. Being able to file important papers and documents is crucial to the organization of a home office because it helps you store those important documents in designated spots. It also keeps you from destroying your office to find one document that was sitting right in front of you the entire time but your desk was so cluttered you didn’t see it. So, do yourself and your sanity a huge favor and make sure you have an organization system in place in your office.
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