10 Tips For Achieving Your Dream Workspace

As we look back upon this rollercoaster of a year, many of us are waving goodbye to 2020 from a makeshift office in the dining room. Changes in work life and home life caused many households to make quick and significant adjustments to how they use the spaces in their homes for work, school, zoom meetings with your one loud coworker, and more.  

Keep reading for some tips on how to take a deep breath and make some adjustments to make your workspace work for you. You’ve had time to discover the flaws in your quickly-thrown-together workspace plan, now take some time to integrate some custom storage and organization because you deserve it.

1. Find Your Own Space

Take a look around your house and do your best to see it with fresh eyes. Ask a friend who knows your home well if you need ideas because it can be challenging to visualize your space anew. 

Think outside the box and consider areas like a nook in a wide hallway that gets sparse traffic during the weekday or a spare bedroom. A closet can be transformed into a functional, compact office by removing the standard shelving and adding a worktop and custom storage, including drawers and upper shelves to suit your needs.

If the work you need to do at home is something that needs to be done outside. Or your art, woodworking, or tinkering with your car is something that makes you happy, reclaim a workspace in your garage by decluttering and installing strategic custom cabinets and storage.

2. Make it Work For You

Give yourself permission to make some changes. Move some things to the basement storage room so you can take over the guest room closet and turn it into a mini-office. Identify the biggest space-hogs in your garage or outdoor workspace (literally), and aim to get them off the ground. Hang kayaks, off-season items like family bicycles, and outdoor furniture. 

3. Remove Distractions

Your goal should be to create a workspace where you can get your work done as efficiently as possible. When the entire family is working from home and e-learning, that can be a major challenge, to put it mildly. 

Aim to remove all the distractions you can from your workspace. Those distractions might include your family members. Finding your workspace within earshot, but out of sight is an excellent first step. Install storage that includes cabinets you can shut or drawers you can close when you need to focus on one thing or another. 

4. Remove Clutter

The through-line of any home organization project is saying goodbye to clutter. Take a look at the space you’ve chosen as a workspace – even if it’s your only option – and cull the clutter. Your goal should be a place with few visual distractions.

5. Make an Organization Plan

What do you need to do your work? Measure the closet or the nook or the corner of the garage you’ve designated at your workspace, and make a plan to use custom storage solutions so that you can have everything you need at your fingertips. Consider practical and inexpensive options like fully-customizable wire shelving systems to get a lot of bang for your buck. 

6. Install Custom Storage

Make the space work so you can work! Talk to a professional or take measurements and look online for inspiration. Install the storage system you need to hide your printer so the guest bedroom still looks like a bedroom, or to lock away all your paints or tools in the garage so you don’t have to worry about little hands getting a hold of them.

7. Keep it Organized

The beautiful thing about good storage is that it allows you to manage your clutter over the long term. If you have a spot for everything, everything is much more likely to end up in its spot. 

8. Shut the Door (Even if it’s Figurative)

Working from your home if you’re not accustomed to it, or if you’re not accustomed to working from the kitchen table because someone has taken over your desk for distance learning, can make it difficult to manage your workday. Your dream workspace should make it easier for you to end the workday and turn towards family life. Taking your office out of the dining room will make it easier for you to stop checking emails after dinner. 

9. Include Something Beautiful

Don’t forget to include one thing that makes you happy. If you’re reconfiguring a closet into a mini-office, consider wallpapering the back wall with something cheerful. Splurge on a knockout roll of wallpaper for the tiny space. Bring in a plant like a ZZ plant or a snake plant that will live happily in a low light situation with very little attention.  

10. Ask the Experts

If you know you need to make a change, but you don’t know where to start, ask the experts at Harkraft. We’ve been designing and installing custom storage solutions like laminate cabinetry and wire shelving for decades, and we can help you see the possibilities. Contact us today to hear our ideas to create your dream workspace.