How to Organize Your Home Office

Host: Working from home can be really tough especially if your computer is in a room that serves more than one purpose. So Rhianne shows us some ways to make your home office a room that you’ll actually love spending time in. Time to get organized. Rhianne: Here’s a look at my home office. Pretty basic but more often than not, I end up taking my laptop to the other room. Meet interior designer Samantha Knapp. Samantha says to keep your office productive and organized, you must create a space that you actually want to spend time in. Samantha: What I would first do is look around and see what you really don’t need on your desk because you guys are sharing the desk so let’s make it really workable, anything you really don’t think you need day to day on the desk, let’s take off. I’m not that tech savvy but these are hard drives, let’s put those in the closet. They’re very close, you can get to the closet and we can also free up the space and maybe something like that gets tucked in that cubby hole. Rhianne: Color can make a dull room fun. Samantha says two trashcans won't waste space. Samantha: I absolutely love color and trashcans are huge because so many people are in their offices all day and they’re printing like mad and what better way to make sure that you’re recycling your papers so things that you aren’t using, the envelopes, the magazine, newspapers so I like to go double. Here’s one maybe for your recyclables and here’s one for your garbage. So the clipboards are really fun because not only are they colorful and bright but you can use them for organization. What I like to do maybe I’ll put bills on the small one. I’ll put something here that’s sort of pressing but not immediately pressing and then maybe I’ll use this in my future down the pipeline to do list. It’s on your desk you can’t forget about it and it’s sort of organized in a way that it’s easy access. Rhianne: You can also buy decorative contact paper and use that to cover clipboards or binders. Colorful containers can be used for paperclips, pushpins or just about anything else. Even your walls can make you feel more productive. My husband loves his baseball. This doesn’t do much for our home office, it’s more of a man cave decoration. Samantha: It is. Rhianne: What do you have for us instead? Samantha: This is a solution too to the problem here, first of all what we chose for this particular space because you guys are sharing it, this is creative inspiration board if we can get it standing in the right place but you’ll see that it’s brown so it’s got a little bit of masculinity to it too. It’s not completely taking over the office in your own way and what we did is we added some feminine inspirations but he also has spaces. If he had his baseball tickets maybe they’re here but I of course as a decorator, I like to think about things that inspire me. Rhianne: It looks much more stylish than a typical cork board. If you’re spending hours in your home office, you’ll also want to think about where you’re sitting. Samantha: I like this chair you know we have a lot of accessories that are bright in here, this is neutral. You can get it again at Tiger Lily’s Greenwich and I like that it’s cushy I can probably sit here for about 8 hours. Rhianne: You could take a nap. Samantha: Let me see, I think I can sit here for about 8 to 10 hours and really feel comfortable. Rhianne: And don’t forget about the lighting. Why is lighting so important in our office, I thought I had a nice lamp. Samantha: You did have a nice lamp but one of the things I like to decorate with is pairs because it sort of adds continuity. And one of the things I noticed in this particular space is I looked up, there’s no above ceiling lighting here and it’s really important if you’re in here for a long time to start turning on your lights early and get your eyes adjusted because you can really damage your eyes looking at the computer screen the whole entire time. Plus these a pair, it’s hot, they’re warm, you can sort of change the light bulbs to get the mood that you want and you rock and roll and you can really stay in here for hours on end. Rhianne: Thanks to Samantha, my home office was transformed into a stylish workspace. For better, I’m Rhianne. Host: And if you want more great tips on jazzing up your home office or any room in the house, check out Samantha’s website by heading to bettertv.com and clicking on the link.