Working at home doesn’t mean that you need to work in a “homely” office. As home-based businesses become more and more popular, the home office environment becomes more important. Because you’re working from home, you need to make sure that the workspace is conducive to you getting work done. If your home office is set up like your living room or is actually located in the living room, forget about it.

Add An L-Shaped Desk

Using L-shaped desks is one way to organize your work space so that you have plenty of room to work, yet you aren’t taking up a lot of space. Place the desk in a corner so that you’re facing the way.. What you’ll find is that this desk configuration gives you more area to work that you would normally have with smaller, separate desks.

It’s also less intrusive and ties the entire room together. If you don’t like the idea of being stuck in a corner, turn the desk around. It will effectively cut a room in half, but this can also be a good thing if you share the area with someone else in the home or you want to use half of the room for projects and the desk area for paperwork.

For example, if you’re a photographer, you might want to divide the room in half using an L-shaped desk. The area in front of the desk can be used for lighting and test shots where you need a 3-point lighting system, while the desk can be used for doing editing or shots where you need a desk.

Add Life To Your Home Office

Just because you work at home doesn’t mean that you have to work in a drab room. Hang plants from the ceiling or place them in window sills. The more, the merrier. Plants can freshen up a room by the simple fact that they soak up carbon dioxide and release oxygen. Depending on the plants you get, they can also make the room smell different from the rest of the house – which will make it feel more like an office and less like you’re working from home.

Light candles around the room. Candles, especially scented ones, can put your mind at ease, make it easier to get things done, and can help you de-stress. Imagine that – de-stressing at work.

Consider hanging a few pictures on the wall. Nature scenes work well to help you keep calm and focused. It’s also something nice to look at when you need to give your eyes a break from the computer screen.

Go Minimal

You don’t need a lot to make a home office functional. In fact, the more stuff you have, the worse. It’s more to maintain, more to clean, and more stuff to buy and potentially replace.

One of the best things you can to is go paperless. Going paperless will do wonders for your office. You won’t need an “inbox,” and files are a lot easier to find and search for. Sure, there’s something charming about having a filing cabinet, but in most cases it’s just unnecessary.

Unless you work in a profession that requires original copies of documents, you should seriously consider scanning everything and then shredding the originals.

About the Author: Robert McGuire is a feng shui expert. He loves writing about how to achieve balance in the home by writing on decorating blogs.

Photo credit – work at home: David Martyn Hunt; office plant: KLPA