Tips for Creating a Home Workspace

Set boundaries

Not everyone has the same amount of space to work with. If you live alone, you might get an entire room for an office. If you live with roommates, perhaps your office is a corner in your bedroom. Whatever its size, establish boundaries for your workzone and stick to them. Do not allow stray papers, folders, sticky notes, notebooks and the like to escape these borders. And do your best to work only in this space (not in your bed or at your kitchen table). Preventing your workspace from taking over your entire home will help you to relax when you’re not plugging away at your work, and to locate materials more easily.

Collect inspiration

This is the fun part. You can gather inspiration tips and photos via sites like Apartment Therapy, Houzz, Lifehacker, or Pinterest.

 

Make your budget work for you

Setting up a home office on a grad student stipend is a daunting task. When deciding how much you can spend on your space, think carefully about the type of work you’ll be doing there. Will you be mostly reading? Writing? Sketching? Consider saving as much money as possible on basics, like your bookshelves or filing cabinet, in order to splurge on one or two items that will make your day-to-day tasks more comfortable.

Display a visual reminder of what excites you about your work

Give yourself an extra motivational boost by keeping something in your workspace that reminds you why you’re interested in your field or research topic to begin with.

Schedule time to keep your space organized

Create a routine for re-organizing your office area on a regular basis, so that your workspace makes you feel a bit more in control. Maybe you take 15 minutes every Friday to file the mountain of papers that has consumed your desk or to re-shelve stray piles of books. It doesn’t have to take much of your time, but it should be consistent.

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