Home Setups That Serve You: Designing the Office

Even if you don’t have an officially designated home office, you might benefit from having a recognized workspace. You take stress off the rest of your rooms when you create this area in your home: no more mounds of old receipts on the nightstand or avalanche of art supplies on the kids’ dresser — all that stuff has a place somewhere else. To successfully create this magically de-stressing office space, pay attention to the needs and habits of your family and focus on simple organizational solutions that will work even when life gets messy.

Find a Place Where You Feel Productive

Let’s say you have a home office, but it happens to be a small room that doesn’t have much light. If you’re a person who works best in lots of nice light, you may find yourself avoiding the office in favor of working at the kitchen table, which is now overrun with your work supplies.


Instead of being angry with yourself for not using your office properly or forcing yourself to work in a place where you don’t feel productive, embrace your habits.

Set up an area in your kitchen that has room for the things you need while you work. By giving them a home, you’ll automatically taken care of the work-cluttered desk, and now you can use your former home office as a media room, storage space or whatever-the-heck-you-want room.


I recently worked with a family that didn’t have a traditional home office. Actually they had no space at all for their office. The rest of their home strained to accommodate work, school and craft supplies. What they did have was a great formal living room that they rarely used. The room was attached to a smaller, constantly used family room, and was a constant source of regret for the homeowners. What's the point of having a beautiful room you never use?

We did the ol' switcheroo and turned the formal living room into a large family room, and the former family room into an office space with tons of built-in storage. The room also features a great conference table that can be used as a workspace for multiple family members, or as additional table space when they entertain.





Work With What You Have

Once you’ve found a place that feels good to you and allows you to be productive, work with what you have. Don’t let the lack of a traditional office space get in your way. A desk can be slid under a window or tucked behind a sofa.

Or you can put a desk beside a bed as a nightstand or getting-things-done stand.


Or just embrace your need for major office storage and embrace the fact that you might have to use a main living area.


Get rid of limiting ideas about what’s allowed to go where. If you pay bills at the dining table, move your serveware to the kitchen and use your credenza to hide a basket with all your check-writing essentials. Maybe the sideboard shown here is stocked with wedding china, or maybe it’s full of office supplies. Either way, it looks fantastic.


Embrace Your Family's Natural Tendencies

I always tell my clients to release the need to be perfect. This area of your home is designed to let the rest of your rooms shine, so cut yourself some slack when it comes to the office. It’s totally natural for things to pile up, but you can work with your own natural tendencies to control the chaos.

For example, I have a file that is a catchall for receipts, important-looking mail and papers that cross my path but don’t need to be dealt with right away. I put things in the folder and forget them until Friday. (That’s the catch — you have to have a little discipline.) On Friday I open the folder and then sort, file or toss out everything inside. It takes about 30 minutes, but it saves me from piles of ominous papers and misplaced receipts and letters. The important thing about the system is that it works for me.


Do your son’s markers never seem to make it into the drawer, even though it’s literally right next to him? Maybe he needs a basket or a cup to house them on top of his desk. Is your husband the king of sticky notes and easily lost slips of paper? A corkboard or magnetic wall can keep all his jotted-down notes exactly where he needs them.

Instead of focusing on fixing the behavior that leads to clutter, focus on organizational systems that complement the behavior.


For kids I’ve found that the kitchen table or a designated space in their bedroom usually works best, but remember that you’re the expert on your family.

If your kids work best in the den, you can put their homework and art supplies on a bar cart that is easily put away when their work is finished. This is also a good option if you have two kids who can’t work together in the same room. A bar cart with wheels can be taken with one child to another part of the house.


For multiperson workspaces, especially in small spaces, I encourage using functional, almost industrial furniture. Elfa is great — by building up and using the walls for storage, you make space for tables or desks. If built-ins aren’t an option, Ikea’s Besta and Pax systems are also great solutions.

Long desks are another wonderful solution for an office area shared by spouses or families. They really help increase the functionality of an area that doesn't have room for a larger table.


Wall storage is perfect for my personal clutter-busting method: The Box System. I keep everything in my office in lovely white boxes with clear labels like “Tape,” “Glue” and “Thank You Notes.” Looking for paper clips? They’re in a box labeled “Fasteners,” along with brads, staples and big ol’ binder clips.

Now the inside of that box is not all right angles and perfection. It’s a pile of various fasteners. But the contents are not cluttering up my office — they’re housed in one of many pretty boxes that look great and make it easy to find what I need fast.


When designing any area of the home, pay attention to what you and your family need from that space. Whether your office is a beautifully decorated room of its own or a nook in a small apartment, its job is to make your life run more smoothly and to make the rest of your home more peaceful.

More: Decorate With Intention: Get Your Home Office Right

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