Customize Your Home Office

Some people use their home office simply as a place to sit down and organize their bills for payment, while others actually work full time from their home office. Either way, your home office should include more than just a desk and a chair, because the more comfortable it is and the more it reflects your personal tastes, the more likely you are to spend significant time in your home office.

Consider your Layout

You should set up your home office so that you can easily reach your desk, your bookshelves, and any storage areas which you routinely need to access. Think about your daily workflow and the items you need to retrieve each day. Install some cozy furniture that will keep you comfortable for those days when you have to spend long hours in the office, but make sure they are also ergonomically sound, so that you don’t develop any unhealthy habits like bad posture.

What About Location?

Make sure your home office is not just a little cubbyhole that isn’t being used in the household. When you have a cramped home office, it’s a psychological downer for you and you probably won’t be enthused about spending much time there. Give yourself some room to move around in the office, and to stretch your legs out when taking a break. Also consider the traffic flow within your household, and how well you can handle distractions. Set your office up in an area where you can either tolerate the traffic flow, or where you are isolated from the rest of the household.

Invest in a Really Good Office Chair

You can save money on almost any other furnishing in your home office, but make sure you have a really good chair to sit in. You may be in your home office for eight hours or more on any given day, and much of that time will be spent sitting. That means you’re going to need a chair which is both comfortable and very supportive. If you spend significant money on any single item of your home office, an excellent office chair should be that one item.

Make Sure you Have a View

If at all possible, choose a location in your household where your home office has a window on one of the sides. If you don’t have a view to the outside, you might start feeling cramped or confined. For those times where you’re not actually involved in accomplishing work activity, you will welcome the opportunity to fix your gaze outside and appreciate the external world for a few minutes.

Have an Unobtrusive Technology Set Up

There is no getting around the fact that you’ll need to set up a computer, a printer, and a phone in your home office. However, you won’t want cords running all over the place that you can trip over, or which get in the way whenever you’re trying to walk around the office. Make sure these devices are set up close to outlets, and feed the cords through a desk grommet, so they can stay organized. Use some kind of organizer or tubing to manage any cords on the floor, so they don’t become a menace that will make your home office a hazard.