Just few decades ago, no one could have thought that the era of the traditional office will soon come to an end. Today however, one in five people in the United States work from home, 12% of people in the U.K. and other first world countries follow in suit. What one can deduce from this is that a modern office is migrating into the digital world, so it may seem irrelevant whether you work from office, Starbucks or your living room. Still, there is quite the difference in productivity here, which is why anyone serious about working from home, might want to consider building a proper home office. Now, in order to do this, you must be systematic, so here is a short checklist for setting up your home office.
Choose the Room
First thing first, you need to choose the right room for your home office and this can be quite tricky if you don’t know what to look for. What you want in your office are primarily two things: seclusion from noise and a lot of light. Because of this, you want your office to be facing backyard rather than the street and ideally for it to be facing east. Natural light simply has no alternative but if you have to choose between these two things always go for a quiet office rather than the light one. Sometimes, you will be forced to choose based on lesser of two evils principle.
Furnish the Office
Now, the greatest drawback in making your home office is a financial one. Namely, when it comes to equipping and furnishing it you are on your own, while in a traditional office all of this would be taken care off by your employer. This might tempt you into trying to save some money by purchasing items of lower quality, however this is highly inadvisable. Both your workstation and your chair (in which you will spend countless hours), are directly connected to your health and productivity. That being said, one of the smart moves is to get an electric cool box for refrigerating freshly made food and not relying on order outs and fast food meals. If you absolutely must make some cuts, make them somewhere else and not on your health and wellbeing.
Manage Your Consumables
An average office worker prints over 10,000 pages per year, however while in the office someone else is paying for that, at home you are left on your own with this. Sure, you can try to be careful about what you print and keep most of it in a digital format, but your printing fund will still be quite significant. In order to solve this, you need to find the cheapest source of paper (usually the recycled one) and ink you possibly can. Sure, once more you don’t want to skim on quality, but if you look hard enough you can even get a top-notch printer with a Canon toner cartridges at quite affordable price.
Remove Distractions
Of course, it is sometimes easier to work from office than from home, but this is solely because of all the distractions that are around you. Just think about it this way, office is designed to be an ideal work environment while you decorate and equip your home solely for your pleasure. So, try to evict any source of noise from your office. If your printer is too loud it can go in the hallway. Finally, if you have two computers (which is always advisable just in case), appoint one as work only and keep no movies, games or photos on it but only work related stuff.
Clean Regularly
It is a known fact that people don’t cope well in a messy environment which is why you want to keep your home office as clean as possible. Start off by organizing your cables (with all devices there should be quite a lot of them) and for this you can go with one of the amazing DIY ideas. Clean your room every few days and pay special attention to your desk surface. There should be no clutters allowed there whatsoever and it is your job to remove them as soon as they appear.
Making an admirable home office is an achievable task and all you have to do is be systematic. Just remember that there are two aspects that you need to satisfy here: productiveness and cost-effectiveness. However, all of this is quite subjective so it would even be safe to assume that whatever works for you is a good course of action.