How To Create A Home Office Anywhere In Your Home

You’ve been working from home for awhile now. As much as you love sitting on a laptop in your living room, the office clutter is making it hard for you to enjoy your home life after work.

While working from home gives you plenty of benefits like:

Wearing your pajamas all day,
Saving money because you are eating lunch at home,
Being able to listen to the music you want to listen to all day.

There are some downsides to the work from home life too.

Distractions from your kids.
Lacking a separation of home and work life.
Not having a dedicated work space.

When you first transition from working out of the home to working at home there is a bit of an adjustment period.

a desk with a sandwich an apple and papers scattered about

Remember your first weeks at your current job? You probably weren’t as organized then as you are now. It took you time to find your flow. You are going to go through that same adjustment period working from home.

Today I’m going to give you solutions to building a functional work space in any room of your home and on a budget.

The Living Room Office

There are several ways that you can build in an office space into your living room. If your living room is large enough or not jam packed with furniture you can possibly add a desk.

If not you can do what I did in this case and add an organization cart to my living room.

The cart neatly holds my Chromebook, planner, sticky notes, pens, and other office supplies I need while staying neatly off to the side.

I can sit and work comfortably in my living room with no issues and even watch a bit of TV while getting some work done. Furthermore, since our homeschool space is currently in the living room, I am right here to help my son with his school work.

Now if you need to have a desk in your living room there are a few creative ways you can do this.

Float your sofa

If you have a larger living room float your sofa into the middle of the living room and place your desk and office space behind the sofa.

I used to have this type of set up years ago and it worked wonderfully. I was able to step away from work and sit on my sofa to watch TV without a constant reminder in my vision of work I could be doing.

Hide Your Office In Your Living Room

You can purchase these from IKEA and have dual shelving that will create a divide between your living and office space too.

The Kallax shelving unit helps you to hide away your office supplies in the closed boxes but also allows you to decorate for your living space on the other side.

Simply place your sofa on the back side of this shelf to hide the bottom half that’s used for your office space.

Products that help create a living room office:

A small desk if you have the space
A comfortable office chair for your desk
A crafting cart
A Chromebook or decently priced laptop.
A white board for quick notes
The Kallax shelving unit from IKEA

Dining Room Office Space

We typically don’t eat in a dining room even when we had a table. In our downsizing we decided to get rid of our dining room table since it just became a clutter hot spot in the home.

So when we moved to Pittsburgh we had this great dining room that I decided to use as my own personal home office. While it still needs some decor help, having a designated home office space is helpful when working from home.

woman working at home while sipping coffee

The first thing you will want to do in your dining room is fix any lighting situations you may have. If you have a light that hangs down getting an S hook that shortens the chain can bring the light closer to the ceiling to avoid hitting it with your head.

Ask me how I know about this?

Make A Home Office In A Small Space

The dining room is typically a small space that actually works perfectly for an office. As a mom I get to be in the middle of the house where I can keep an ear open for anything my preschooler might be doing.

I have the additional benefit of being near the kitchen where I can watch food that’s cooking while still getting my work accomplished. However, for the first few weeks or months of working at home I don’t suggest making bread while you should be working.

The dining room also provides you with the ability to set up a home office on a budget. The room is usually offset from a living space so you don’t need shelving units to hide you away from the rest of the room.

Embrace the office decor of the space in order to make it feel more like an office. Set up a book case, some greenery, and hang curtains to really set the room.

Products that help create a dining room home office:

S hook for hanging lamps
Desk
Chair
Bookshelf
Curtains
Rolling Drawers

Master Bedroom Home Office

I’m not one to typically advocate for putting a home office in your bedroom. But certain situations may require this step.

If you need a place where it’s easier to concentrate, get silence, or attend meetings, your bedroom may be the perfect place.

Of course, I believe your bedroom should remain your bedroom so I don’t recommend adding a desk, desktop computer, or large office furniture to your room. Instead you simply need an over the bed desk like this one.

Work From Home Desk

This desk has been extremely helpful in me getting quiet work time in our bedroom. Put away it just takes over one of our walls but when I have to work it slides nicely over the bed.

Try to keep clutter to a minimum on this rolling desk but only using a laptop or Chromebook and a planner and a couple of sticky note pads with pens.

Use a hobby cart or a nightstand with drawers to hide away additional supplies you may need.

The nicest part about this desk is the height. When the desk is up against a wall I have my laundry basket and hobby cart under it. The desk leaves me with more usable space without making my bedroom feel like an office.

Products that help create a master bedroom office:

Setting Up A Home Office In A Spare Bedroom

If you are lucky enough to have a den or a spare bedroom in your house, now may be the perfect time to set up that home office.

There are a few things to remember about having a home office that is used as an actual work space.

First, it needs to be free from clutter. A cluttered work space is going to be a distraction to the work you need to get done.

Make it comfortable for your needs. Take my husbands office for example. He stacked his monitors using a special stand so that he could free up desk space.

This also provides a bit of neck tension relief as the monitors are at eye level instead of below where you’ll be holding your head down.

Products That Help Make A Home Office

A large desk
A comfortable chair
Cube shelving
A monitor stand
Cable management systems
White boards

Creating A Home Office In Your Home

Your office space should allow you to complete your work in a comfortable setting. For me it’s helpful to be able to switch up where I work from on a day to day basis.

Today I’m working in my actual office in the dining room, later I might sit in the living room, tomorrow I may retreat to the bedroom so I can get some much needed quiet time.

Working from home doesn’t have to be a struggle but it’s not something that you can just jump into.

It takes time to acclimate to your new work environment. It also takes time to train the family members to understand that your work time is important and you shouldn’t be distracted.

Eventually it all falls right into place and you’ll end up being more productive and feel better about working from home.

Setting Up A Home Office For Remote Work

There are a few things that you will need that will make remote work easier for you. As someone who’s been working from home for almost 3 years now these products have saved me on more than one occasion.

A decent WIFI router
50 foot Cat 6 Wire
Wire Covers for the floor
Wire Guides for Walls
A fast laptop that isn’t too expensive
2 monitors for my desktop
Extra phone chargers in my office spaces
A decent mic and a good webcam for meetings
Good speakers for music
White boards for brainstorming
A planner for tracking my day
A hobby cart to store essential work items that can travel around the house with me.

I live in a 100 year old home that likes to block signals so most of the wires and a decent router helps to make the working from anywhere in my home easier.

Wire covers on my walls and floors makes it so we don’t trip of have spaghetti mess of wires distracting from the decor I’ve set up.

woman trying to manage cables under a desk

The hobby cart however has been a life saver in my work at home efficiency. I am able to cart everything I need to basically any area of the home I wish to work in.

For instance, if I need to move back to our private home office or my bedroom, it’s easy to have everything I need all in one spot and wheel it around my house.

Office Setup At Home

The facts are, working from home ultimately saves you money in travel expenses, food expenses, and wardrobe expenses. It also gives you extra time in your day for self care, time to spend with family, and even time to start enjoying that favorite hobby of yours.

It gets easier to work from home.

Where is your current work space in your home? Let me know what problems you face in creating your dedicated workspace in the comments below. Follow me on Pinterest for more like this and pin this to your favorite home office boards.

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