home office blues

I'd love this office from IKEA but I still don't think it has enough shelves to fit all my books!

For those of you fellow writers and bloggers out there, I’m sure we’ve all learned by now that working from home isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be. But for some reason, even though I’ve been at it for a couple of years now, I still find myself clinging on to that dream of the perfect home office, yet I always seem to find that space is much more elusive in reality.

Maybe it’s because when I first started working from home, I set up shop in a closet. No, I’m not even kidding. Across the hall from my bedroom was a giant walk-in closet with electricity so I thought, “Hey, why not?” and set up a little desk and bookcase in there. Was a little strange? Yes. Was it cramped? Definitely. Did people often mistake my closed door for an empty office and turn out the light as they walked by, thus shutting off my power? More often than you think. But it worked and from time to time I still miss that tiny little room affectionately dubbed “the cloffice”. (Which is apparently now a thing. Who knew?)

But lately I’m feeling the home office blues more and more. I do have a little set-up in our second bedroom which can pass for an office, but it shares space with our pantry, the microwave, and assorted boxes and bags that are half for packing, and half are just things that have no homes.

It’s made me excited for my new apartment and my new home office because the possibilities seem endless. But sometimes when you aren’t challenged for space your options seem to increase by ten-fold and you’re faced with more choices than you ever have before.

I know. Boo hoo for me, right? But in all honesty I kind of envy the people who have their neat little work station in a corner of their living room, or the makeshift home offices that seem to proliferate in recent kitchen renovations. How can you set up stall like that, in the middle of everything, and yet function still so well? I can barely function if there’s a dirty glass somewhere in my reach and the fact that my current office doesn’t have a door sometimes results in me daydreaming about fancy doorknobs rather than focusing on the desk I should be eventually getting.

I guess the key to everyone’s dream home office is knowing what it is they like and what they don’t; what works for them and what doesn’t. Then it’s just a matter of taking into consideration the money and space you have to work with and go from there. And because I’m really into making lists, here’s one of all my home office must-haves:

– a door that can close! Writing a blog post, let alone an intense financial report for a client is hard enough. Try doing it with constant video game noise coming in from the living room, followed by a stream of cursing. You get my point.

– a nice big desk. I’ve done small and compact long enough to realize that I need to space to spread out everything as I’m working. I just work better knowing that all the relevant materials I need are somehow within reach. It sounds messy, but it’s really quite organized. My desktop often ends up looking like a complicated game of office-supply Tetris.

– a window. For some people it’s a distraction but I somehow work better knowing that if I need to take a break there’s a window I can gaze out of wistfully while pondering all the other things I could do instead of working.

– a big, comfy chair. There are days where I simply. Cannot. Work. At. A. Desk and curl up somewhere to edit an article, or whatever else it is I’m working on. Having a chair would be such a novelty to me but the more I think about having an alternative workspace like that, the more I think I must have it.

– tons of boxes. I hoard a crazy amount of office supplies and the way they’re organized is just…shameful. Honestly. It’s pretty sad that for someone who organizes people for a living can’t get it together to find some sort of pen storage. But I hold out the hope that this will happen someday.

– a filing cabinet of some sort. I currently don’t have one. This disturbs me, possibly more than the pen thing as I can generate a crazy amount of paperwork for such an average-sized person. Maybe all that spreading out is actually counter-productive (see point B).

Ultimately everyone’s office wish list is going to look different, as their unique needs will depend on their jobs and lifestyles. You don’t necessarily need to use my wish list- the thought of going paperless terrifies me, for example, so a minimalist craving a modern, mess-free office might crave a scanner for all of their important documents.

The bottom line is that your workspace is best designed by you to suit your own needs. As long as it has a good workspace, adequate storage and lighting and allow you to function (somewhat) like a normal person than it’s all good.