Why I have a separate home office corner (and so should you)
Like many others, I had no experience of working from home before this year. Since the onset of COVID-19, my office declared work-from-home for the very first time. For almost a month I worked while sitting on a sofa in my hall or even lying on my bed in the bedroom.
For the time being, this setup was working. I was grabbing the laptop as soon as I wake up, responding to the mails and attending meetings from my bed itself until one day when it stopped working. I realised I feel exhausted all the times and have mixed up my personal space with office work. My back was aching severely as the setup was really bad if not worst ergonomically.
As the pandemic was not ending soon, I started to think about how to create a little workspace in my home. I just have a room to myself and a hall which I share with a flatmate. And, it goes without saying that I wanted to spend a minimal amount of money for this makeover. Obviously, I can’t have a space that looks like this.
After a lot of thoughts, I decided to set up my home office inside my bedroom. I created a checklist of items which I needed for converting my room into a bedroom Slash office space.
Table
I checked out a few office tables in a nearby store. But, as I had limited space, I didn’t want it to be very big and at the same time not too small to have space for my stuff. Finally, I decided on the size of 3” x 2” and without any cabinet. The reasons why I ignored the cabinets are,
- The rim of cabinets gets rusted after some time
- The space remains under-utilized
- If at later point of time, two people want to use it there would be no legroom for another person.
Finally, I got a good one in just ₹ 1600 in the local store.
Chair
I checked out a few chairs also online and in stores. But, finally decided to not buy one. I had 6 chairs in my dining table which we were not using. I took one of them and kept it in the room. So, I did not spend any money on it. You can also re-purpose an existing chair from the other place of your house, but do check its comfortable for sitting long hours
Whiteboard
There are plenty of tools available to take notes and I do use them for tracking tasks. But, there are some day-to-day tasks like calling clients, responding to emails and scheduling sync up calls which are too small to note on a tasks tracking tool. So, I decided to have a whiteboard. First I considered a smaller one. I noticed that I was not using pen and paper for taking notes while working from home. So, finally, I got a 3” x 2” sized board so that I can jot down notes like meeting minutes etc also on it. I got it online from Amazon in ₹ 1000.
I also bought 2 marker pens black and red from a local shop worth ₹ 50
And writing on board will save paper also which is in line with saving the environment. So if that’s your thing…
How does it look?
So, in total, I spent ₹ 2650 in setting up my home office and it’s completely worth it. I kept the table from one of the walls and chair facing towards windows.
I will recommend everyone who is working from home to have a workspace corner in your home. It will really sort the things out for you, and you will be in a much better place mentally and physically. You can also have a similar setup if you have limited space and budget like me. You can customise it according to your needs. Don’t forget to take proper breaks from work and give time to yourself.
Do you know a friend who is looking for setting up a home office? Share this post with her and help her out.
