Working from Home - Home Office ReVamp - Before & After!

Greetings from my quarantine to yours! I know this is a challenging time - we’re working from home, many are home schooling kids, or our working adult children have come back home. The line between life and business is blurred. Life feels a little unsteady. I am here to offer some help and inspiration! I hope I can encourage you to make your work space work for you, for your kids’ homework, for your sanity, or just for “being” during this time.

Here’s my home office admission: I found myself in an awful state! I have a separate studio from my home and it is my happy, creative space. No interruptions, just me and fabrics, and samples of items I love to put in my projects. You might call it my own creative escape! However, due to the quarantine I have not been commuting to it and therefore I am working entirely from my home.

When we moved into our rental house in New Hampshire (a trial period to see if we like living here) what is the living room became a dumping ground of sorts. We put our large farm table in there and each holiday gathering I have been scrambling to shove everything out of the way to host dinner. The room has been full of “things” - things that I didn’t want to part with because we don’t actually know where will be moving, but things that had no meaning so they just felt like junk and clutter. It was a room-sized storage bin. And on top of this storage space I was working…not ideal.

With no organization, no shelving, no reprieve from the chaos, I reached out to another of my Womens’ Business League (WBL) partners Andrea Dupont, a Feng Shui design practitioner. HELP! I am certain she heard the scream before the call!

I sent Andréa these photos to show her the mess I was trying to work from. I also sent my proposed new layout.

I had covered every flat surface I could find, even brought in that plastic folding table!

yes, my sofa was my filing cabinet. And that stairmaster … yup.

Andréa sent me her new layout and I got to work. I did spend about $300.00 in the room - 2 new IKEA shelves, homosote board from Home Depot to use as design boards, and 2 gallons of paint. I share this because it is possible to make large improvements with not a lot of money. However the thing I learned with Feng Shui is that you don’t have to spend any money, Andréa’s insights will help you figure out where/how you should be working, using items you already own, even if it is at your kitchen table.

My little “wealth” corner … with my Grandmother’s Chair, a dear friend’s table and my favorite whimsical lamp!

From Andréa I learned that “Feng Shui is based on the premise that individuals are energetically linked to their environments and that their prosperity is enhanced by harmonious and balanced surroundings. The key principle is that everything is alive, everything is connected and everything is always changing.”

Andrea’s method included setting an intention whenever I moved things to a new location. This meant mindfully taking a moment with each of the items that I had started to see as “junk” and remembering why I owned it and gave it space in my room. What I found was that the “things” I had shoved in this room really were special to me, they are pieces that remind me of my parents, my grandparents and beautiful friends. As I intentionally set them into the new layout I found they took on a new, more purposeful meaning. Their energy was enriching my space rather than just cluttering it. The result was a de-cluttered, life-filled, love-filled, nurturing, creative space that makes me feel taken care of.