By Leslie Whatmough
If you work in an office environment, the term home office may suggest a lifetime of homework, but a well designed home office can be a liberating space that is both functional and inspiring.
To keep a healthy balance in life it is important to find time to work, love, laugh, and create. Having a space in the home that inspires you to unleash your creative side is as important as any other functional space.
So throw out your old ideas about a home office and reinvent it as a studio, a place to paint, sew, write or build things that make your heart sing.
Choosing a space that is large enough to accommodate both the creative and practical functions of the room is the primary concern. Treat this studio as a blank canvas whose primary function is to inspire, so paint the walls in colours that set the mood and hang posters of role models or write phrases to encourage action.
It is important to think of this studio as having two distinct functions so if possible do not try to use one surface for two purposes. A desk that functions as the place to write cheques may become buried in the associated paperwork and the effort required to clear it off may deter you from using the space for its creative function. Find separate solutions for each function in the room and ignore that voice from childhood that insists that the space be cleaned up every night. If necessary ensure that this space is not visible to the rest of the home. A work in progress will allow you the freedom to commit small chunks of time without wasting that time on repetitive set-up and will allow more time for creativity.
Organization is the key to a successful home office/ studio. Commit only the minimum of space necessary to those reality tasks and keep the larger room for the creative endeavors. Bill paying and menu planning can be organized into an accordion file and requires only a counter big enough to hold a laptop or keyboard. A traditional monitor can be wall mounted for space saving if necessary. For the creative centre, comfortable furniture should be a priority as creativity often requires us to slow down and give inspiration the opportunity to surface.
A home studio is not an indulgence, it is a necessity. Taking time to allow your souls expression is the secret to a long and happy life.
