How To Make Your Workspace Inspiring
* Disclaimer: I had written this all pre-quarantine, but unfortunately, didn’t get the photos of my office cubicle before I got laid off temporarily, so please enjoy these images of my at home work space, where I’ve been doing all of these blog posts from! Same rules apply, but my at-home workspace is definitely much cuter if you ask me, hahaha!
Whether you work from home, or in an office, keeping your work space inspiring to you is actually extremely important. Think about how much time you spend in your work space; 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, every week (with the exceptions of holidays & vacations, obviously). Either way, we spend a lot of time in our work spaces! Being a full time designer, working in a creative field can be a lot of fun, but also can be very creatively draining, and depending on what kind of job you have, you could be working a very corporate office, where everyone has the same grey cubicles.
For me, my work space needs to keep me inspired all the time. I can’t work in a cubicle with no colour, photos or any sort of reflection of who I am, and if I have to spend this much time of my life in it, I want to make it as comfortable & cozy for myself as possible. Decorating my work space brings me a lot of joy, and is a big reflection on who I am as a person, and I believe everyone can & should also have that kind of area to work in. Today’s post, as you can see, is my top eight tips to keep your work space inspiring for you, so let’s start with my first one:
* Note: This is what works for me, but may not work best for everyone!
Tip No. 1:
Keep Your Work Space Clean
It sounds pretty obvious, but keeping your work area clean and tidy is super important, unless you’re one of those people that thrives in organized chaos (a lot of creative types are messy, but know exactly where everything they need is). Some of the best things you can do for yourself is making sure you properly recycle any old bottles that may be hanging around your desk, throw out your dried up pens & get yourself some cable organizers for any random cables that could be all over your desk - I like to have an extra charger for my headphones & phone on hand, and my favourite Desk Cable Clip from Lee Valley stops them from falling out of reach from behind my desk.
Another thing you should keep on hand is a smaller duster & some all purpose cleaning wipes. Desks get shockingly dusty, and you should definitely dust off your work surfaces more often. Keeping some all purpose wipes on hand will also help to remove any coffee spills from your desk, as well as keep germs at bay, which we all know we could use some improved hygiene right now!
Tip No. 2:
Organize & Re-organize Regularly
Keeping all of your stuff organized is again, obvious but really important. Don’t just keep your important work documents organized, keep everything down to your highlighters & pens in a specific spot so you aren’t wondering where the heck they’ve gone. I like to keep all of my pens directly on my desk in a 3-section pen holder. In one section, I have pens & pencils, another has all of my highlighters, and the last section holds my miscellaneous items like my scissors, white out & staple remover in it. I never question where anything is, and whenever I need to quickly grab a pen & highlighter for a meeting, I don’t have to look all over the place to get one.
Tip No. 3:
Make an Inspiration Board
This seriously is probably my absolute favourite thing I’ve done with my work space! If your work area has a pin board, make it a real life Pinterest board! Fill it with images and quotes that inspire you and make you want to be in your work space. Also take some of your own photos & memories, and reflect your own life in it. Make a Pinterest board, and go to town on pinning photos that bring you joy, and inspiration or maybe even photos of places you want to go, things you want to do, food you want to try and everything in between. When you’ve got enough to fill your pin board, start printing them out (I just printed mine on regular printer paper & then cut them out). Start pinning them into a collage, mixing up the colours, textures & kind of photos, and like I said, add some of your own life in there! I’ve added photos of my boyfriend & I, my ticket from the Empire State Building, a sticker from Hawai'i, a postcard from Paris and mixed in a bunch of buttons & pins I’d purchased over the years. Not only does the pin board reflect me, and who I am, but it also provides me with visual inspiration and goals I’d like to work towards that I can look at every single day!
Tip No. 4:
Reduce The Amount of Things You Have
Reduce, reduce, reduce. If you’ve got stuff sitting on your desk that doesn’t bring you any sort of happiness, inspiration or reflect who you are as a person, get rid of it. You want your work area to bring out the best and happiest side of you that you possibly can, and when something has seem to just become junk, taking up room on your desk, it’s time for it to go. For example, I, for the longest time, had some little Disney Itty Bitty’s sitting on my desk that I found, as much as they were cute, I wasn’t as in love with my little Itty Bitty’s as much as I was a year ago. So, I packed them away into a drawer that I wasn’t using. Honestly, I haven’t pulled them out since, so I’m thinking it might be time to part ways with them & donate them so someone out there can give them some love!
Tip No. 5:
Spruce Up Your Work Space with Plants
If you’re anything like me, I’m a terrible plant mom. I’m really not good at keeping plants alive, but they can really add some life (literally) to your work space. A couple of easy to take care of plants that I like to keep in my work area are cacti & bamboo. Both require pretty minimal maintenance, but add a nice element of the outdoors to my work space which I love.
For those of you who really can’t keep a plant alive, or just really don’t feel like having to take care of any plants, a lot of fake plants now look so real, and the only maintenance they really require is shaking the dust off of them every once in a while. Going this route will also allow you to expand what kind of plants you can have in an office, given that most offices are scent-free, so you can have as many fake roses in there as you want! HomeSense is my favourite place to find my faux flowers. You also can totally mix it up, like I have and have some fake & some real plants in your work space.
Tip No. 6:
Add Some Framed Photos
One really common thing you see in a lot of work spaces is people keeping photos of their family up for them to look at, and I am absolutely no exception to this, but I like to switch it up, and put some of my photos in frames instead. Now, I know not everyone has massive amounts of desk space, but if you do, I can’t recommend getting some frames for your photos enough. It makes your desk feel more homey, and cozy and really highlights those photos in particular. I often catch myself looking at my framed photos far more than anything else in my work space.
Tip No. 7:
Lighting. Don’t be afraid to buy it.
My work space is dark, no where near a window, and honestly, kind of depressing! If your work area is like this too, I can’t recommend going out to buy a desk lamp enough. I decided after a couple of days in my dark corner, that I couldn’t keep working in such a sad, dark space, and I could feel my mood altering because of it. You don’t have to buy an overly expensive lamp either - I just went to Ikea & bought myself the KLABB Table Lamp for myself, but if $40 is still too pricey (which I totally get that), I’ve said it before & I’ll say it again - HomeSense.
Tip No. 8:
Use Books & Magazines as a Monitor Riser
One thing that I highly recommend doing is taking any old magazines or coffee table books that you don’t often find yourself reading, and stacking them up to use as a monitor riser for your computer screen(s), and you can stack them as high as you need, making it a bit more of a customizable height for whatever suits you best. Not only is this being resourceful, but it also looks a lot nicer than a plastic, crappy monitor stand. Plus you can now reuse some of your old magazines that you don’t necessarily want to get rid of, but don’t re-read, haha.
Tip No. 9:
Keep Some Wellness Items on Hand
And my last tip in today’s post - keep some basic wellness things on hand like unscented hand lotion, hand sanitizer (once it’s not $100+ for a bottle on Amazon…), a nail file, lip balms, or anything else that makes you feel best! This could include things like extra bags of tea, a small bottle of pain killers or in my case, I love to keep a Saje Peppermint Halo roll-on, as well as my personal diffuser (only filled with water) in case I feel myself needing a little bit of a pick me up! While at home, I’ve found myself often reaching for my Deep Forest (holiday limited edition) diffuser blend to bring a little bit of the outdoors inside, while we’re in quarantine.
Is there anything on this list that you already do to keep yourself inspired & at your best while at work? Anything that you may have never thought of before? I’d love to know in the comments below! But, if not - I’ll see you guys again next Tuesday, xo!
