With summer winding down and the work grind heating up, it’s time to revaluate your workspace. We scoured Pinterest for the most inspiring workspaces. Steal ideas from pretty, functional offices, visit our Pinterest page for even more inspiring ideas and tips on the best tech gear to keep you organized and share your favorite tools of your trade in the comments.

You can tell a lot about a person from his or her workspace. Office space and the utilitarian things in it surround us from morning to evening and are vital to an efficient day. Done well, a workspace, whether at home or the office, can be a beautiful, creative place that helps productivity. Here are five inspiring workspaces we found on Pinterest.

New Meets Old

We love this old farm table mixed with high tech devices. The cables and cords are cleverly hidden and there’s open storage space in the desk. It’s the perfect blend of new and old.

Maximizing Space

This workspace created out of a corner is a brilliant way to save space. Lots of covered storage keeps things uncluttered and let it’s position in an open part of the house lets you keep an eye on the family comings and goings.

Maintaining Natural Light

We love open shelving for those that can commit to putting everything in their place. The open shelving lets in a ton of natural light, helping you stay focused and the easily being able to find the office tools you need. This space is so comforting you might have a hard time keeping your kids away from desk.

Art + Art + Art

Make your own inspiration wall for those days when nothing comes easy. A workspace filled with art is an easy way to add color to a white space while keeping everything feeling crisp, fresh and bright. Just try to not be productive in this space.

 Make it a Library Day

There’s something cozy and comforting about a library. Surround your workspace in your favorite books and you’ll find yourself wanting to go to your home office each day.

Need more office organizing help? Contact an In Order to Succeed organizing specialist today.

 

 

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Simply put, you need a home office space. You need a spot where you can work undisturbed on regular projects such as taxes, retirement planning, freelancing or even finishing your MBA. Create a home office in that spare room or that extra room that only serves as a guest room once every couple of years. Follow these three tips and you’ll have your ideal workspace in no time.

Work in a Room With a Window

If we’ve learned anything from cubicle culture, it’s that being cut off from sunlight is unnatural and unhealthy. A study by the School of Architecture at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champagne found that workers in windowless environments or “workstations” had poorer sleep quality, slept fewer hours and scored lower on assessments for vitality, mental functioning and social functioning. Lack of natural light disturbs your circadian rhythm, which in turn affects your sleep. Over time, it also can result in health problems that range from diabetes to higher accident rates.

If you can choose your workspace, when creating a home office pick a room with a window. However, you do want to control the amount of light coming in, particularly if your office faces east or west and will get the brunt of the sun. Invest in adjustable quality blinds that allow you to control the amount of light that comes in. If you live in a climate with extreme temperatures, consider cellular or solar blinds that boost energy efficiency. Once you find a type you like, make sure it matches your decor.

Get Attractive, Comfortable Furniture

You need furniture that supports your work. First, determine what your primary function will be in that office. Is it working on a computer? Making sales calls? Providing counseling services? Make sure to invest in furniture that helps you get your work done.

Entrepreneur recommends that you choose a chair manufacturer like Keilhauer or Humanscale that designs chairs to properly support your back and spine and balance your pelvis. The article also suggests getting foot rests, an ergonomic mouse shaped to fit your hand and soft keyboard pads to make work less stressful on your limbs.

Best Reviews features five desks that are good for their durability, storage capacity, work surface and price for home offices. Only one was an executive-style desk, and three were L-shaped desks that emphasize computers. The fifth combined a bookcase with a desk. Its top pick, Bush Furniture’s Cabot-L Desk, has these features:

• A complete organizational system that includes a file cabinet with glass doors, cubed bookshelves and cubby storage
• Under-the-desk charging station
• Optional desk extension with matching-height lateral file
• Polished Harvest Cherry or Espresso Oak finish

Choose Wall Paint That Suits Your Professional Goals

The color of your home office should suit your profession and goals. Sally Augustin, an environmental psychologist and expert on person-centered design, tells Forbes that different colors can be used to gain an advantage at work. For example:

• Greens are thought to boost creativity.
• Pink is calming, which is why many team locker rooms are painted pink.
• White is associated with boredom, or, in some cases like the Apple Store, modernism.

Choose a color that suits your business and inspires you to complete the work you need to do.

When office personnel were asked which task they dislike the most, filing came in as their number one least favorite chore. While filing may not be an exciting or fun office organization function, but it is a necessary task for running an office or household efficiently.

But, hate it or not, filing documents, receipts, and invoices must be addressed in one way or another. So, let’s review how to file with four simple solutions that can make the process simpler and avoid paper pile-ups.

(Note: Although I am a strong supporter of scanning whenever possible to eliminate paper storage we cannot ignore that even the most “paperless” office still will house some files and records that may be neither convenient nor appropriate for a computer or cloud-based scanning solution.)

Shred and recycle aggressively. The first step to office organization is to ask the question, “Does this document need to be filed?” Much of what comes to us by mail can go directly into the shredder. At the time, you open and read your mail, decide whether you’ll need that piece of paper in six months or a year. Be very cautious not to save or file something that you probably won’t need to reference again. If you need to find this information again, can you locate it without much difficulty? Does it contain information you can live without? If the answer to both questions is yes, then don’t set it aside for filing – instead trash or shred immediately.

Map it out before you begin setting up your files. Thinking through office organization with the logic of what you want to store and where you want to store it is a crucial step at the beginning of the process. Write your goals on paper (or type on your computer) so you can review, evaluate, and fine-tune how your new filing system will be configured. Consider what you will place in a particular file drawer or bin, and which records should be grouped together in a particular sequence. I recommend doing this in the form of an outline and creating main categories, which will be your hanging file folders, and sub-categories, which will be interior file folders. This will become your Master File and it will also prove helpful in planning for the purchase of your filing supplies.

Use broad filing categories. Don’t create a new file folder for every type of paper that crosses your desk. Too many file folders are not efficient or necessary. Not only is it tiresome and time-consuming to search through all those folders, there is also a far greater chance of misplacing something by using several different files than one for the entire category.

Keep your most frequently used files close and convenient. I am often surprised when I work with people who don’t consider how much time they spend going back and forth to find files; files housed far from their desk or workstation wastes time for retrieval. When thinking about office organization, take into consideration your daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly needs. Desktop File Boxes are a great way to add some convenient file storage to a desk, bookshelf, or cart.

Hopefully, these four tips will help you better organize your filing and understand the basics to get started and staying organized. Stay tuned for more filing strategies.

Room to Breathe and Work: Tricks to Enhance a Small Office

The goal to live and work in smaller spaces and use space more efficiently is a great idea – it conserves energy, keeps us more organized and ensures that we can manage tasks well in just about any home or office building.

When it comes to setting up a small workspace, there are tricks in decor and furnishings that can help make the area feel bigger without adding square footage. Whether you work from a home office or you’re assigned a tiny cubicle, aspects such as lighting, paint, furniture choices and others will make a huge difference and help you feel more productive.

Furniture

The last thing you need is furniture that takes up so much space that you feel packed like a sardine into your small workplace. You shouldn’t have to squeeze between a desk and a chair to get to your door. Try these tips instead.

• Get furniture to perform double duty, such as a seat that opens up to storage or a desk with leaves to pull out when you need them and tuck away when you don’t.
• Invest in a backless office chair. It creates more visual space and your posture might even benefit.
• Try to find pieces that neatly hide everything in cubby holes, drawers and generally away from sight. The less cluttered your space is, the bigger it will feel.
• Avoid dark, clunky pieces of furniture in favor of a sleek, modern look.

Wall Color

If the walls feel like they’re closing in on you, fight back with some clever design tricks.

• Light, airy paint makes a world of difference. And solid white walls aren’t your only option, so go ahead and get creative. Shades such as beige, light blues and greens and yellow are all great for expanding space.
• Another trick concerning paint is to go monochromatic with the ceiling, trim and baseboards, choosing a slightly different tint of the same color for each. If you paint the trim and baseboards a lighter tint than the walls, the walls will look like they are farther away.

Lighting

Light is the easiest way to keep the eyes moving around a room and create the illusion of space.

• Try lamps in four corners.
  Banish darkness and make every inch of space count with plenty of lamps.
• Use natural light if possible.
  The view of the great outdoors will make your space seem much larger, so go ahead and make the most of your windows. You might even want to leave them unadorned, with no blinds or drapes. But if it proves to be too distracting, a sheer curtain will allow light while keeping you focused.
• Try adding emergency light fixtures
  While planning for the lighing for your room, you can also think of adding emergency light fixtures in that. These type of lighting fixtures provide 90 minutes of emergency lighting during an evacuation emergency procedure. They are very durable, affordable and reliable.

Decor

Perhaps you’ve never thought about decorating a workspace as you would a house, but a few simple tweaks will enhance the space.

• Pick a single color scheme.
  Your space will feel larger if you strive for visual organization and one way to accomplish this is grouping items by color. Whether it’s stationary, paperweights or pens, try to keep your room harmonious for best results.
• Take it easy on the patterns.
  Busy patterns will confuse the eye and make your workspace shrink. Opt for solids in bright, sunny hues instead.
• Use mirrors.
  Wall-to-wall mirrors might not be your style, but a strategically placed mirror opposite of the doorway will make the space seem much larger.
• Put unsightly cords together.
  Don’t cover your floor space in wires; corral them into a cable box and tuck them away from sight.
• Add shine when possible.
  Keeping surfaces clean and dusted will help them reflect and make the space much larger.
• Don’t forget about the vertical space.
  There’s a reason so many people fit on the island of Manhattan – everything goes up instead of out. Take that same concept into your workspace by installing higher shelves. You may also want to place focal points such as artwork near the ceiling, in order to draw the eyes upward.
• Keep the floors covered in a light rug.
  Don’t throw a dark rug at your feet – and don’t hesitate to place a rug lighter than the color of your floor. Make sure the rug’s color coordinates with the walls and other decorative accents.

Remember, physical space can equal mental space, and your personal work space is a great spot to practice making the most of every inch. Before you know it, you’ll feel more creative and productive with your newfound breathing room.

Garret Stembridge is part of the team at www.extraspace.com, a leading provider of self-storage facilities. Garret often writes about storage and organization topics for homes and for businesses.