home office

Work

Top 10 Home Office Hacks

2:00AM Kevin Purdy | Whatever kind of work you do at home, your office is one place you want to spend the time to make comfortable and convenient. Take 10 of our tips on organising, fixing, and streamlining that space. More »
Work

Designing The Perfect, Personalised Home Office

9:00PM Kevin Purdy | Until recently, Sara Rimer had the kind of home office where a filing cabinet ended up as just another surface for clutter piles. Then she called some home office designers, reconfigured everything, and shared her experience. Rimer’s story in the New York Times goes into detail on how her design consultants determined what she’d need as a writer, how it was implemented, and why the softer stuff—inviting lighting, familiar sights, a really comfortable chair—is just as important as proper organisation. And if you’ve ever felt like the label maker needs its own holiday, Rimer’s office designers can relate. More »
Organise

Tech Writers Tell How To Rig Up The Perfect Home Office

3:30PM Angus Kidman | Unsurprisingly given my job, I know a lot of people who write about technology for a living. A large percentage of that group are self-employed and work from home. As a result, when a discussion started on a tech journalist mailing list I subscribe to about the requirements for the perfect home office, there was plenty of lively debate and a lot of useful ideas. Here’s some of the things that Australia’s tech writers think are essential when working from home. More »
Fix

Green Your Home Office

1:50AM Lifehacker US Edition | While kicking the commute habit can certainly help reduce your carbon footprint, you can be greener. Green web site TreeHugger’s guide to greening your home office offers some good tips. The truly smug use recycled furniture, have a paperless office, clean with non-toxic, biodegradable products, and buy earth-friendly electronics and office supplies. But even a potted aspidistra or two can make difference by oxygenating your workspace, whether you work at home or not. Any tips for reducing your impact on gaia around the homestead? I, for one, wash my pants far less frequently. More »
Work

Backyard Shed Turned Home Office

9:00PM Gina Trapani | Reader Brian DeHamer needed a home office but lived in a crowded house, so instead he used extra space out behind his garage. He writes: More »
Organise

Extreme Lifehacker Home Office Makeover

3:00AM Lifehacker US Edition | When my messy home office got so cluttered I couldn’t get anything done in it, it was time to take action—and I turned to Lifehacker for advice. Disorganisation leads to lack of free time, lack of free time leads to believing you’ll never be able to get it all under control again, and that is how I ended up as a terribly scattered person in a wretchedly cluttered office. The responsibilities of adulthood, marriage, and parenthood forced me to admit the haphazard approach to life that coloured my college years wasn’t going to cut it anymore. In the following makeover confessional, check out the tips and tricks I gleaned from Lifehacker to transform my mountain of clutter into fuel for a productivity machine. More »

Learn the First Steps to Becoming an “Unclutterer”

1:10AM Kevin Purdy | Erin Doland, editor of the seriously-organised blog Unclutterer, guest-blogs at the Zen Habits site with a kind of beginner’s guide to making the first steps toward becoming an “unclutterer” versus just “clean.” The difference? An unclutterer “has systems in place to handle the things he or she owns,” meaning everything that comes into your abode. As one example, Doland recommends having all your paper-placing items at arm’s length: More »

Markee Dry Erase Paint

6:00AM Adam Pash | If you liked the idea of the wall-sized whiteboard calendar but weren’t keen on the price, or maybe you wanted to go even bigger, now you can—Markee dry erase paint turns any surface into a dry erase board. It’s not cheap, at $97 per gallon, but it’s cheaper than the wall calendar, and you should be able to get a lot of coverage out of a whole gallon of paint. It’s kind of like the paint-on chalkboard for the dry erase crowd. Wonder if erasing permanent marker is as simple on a Markee made white board. Markee [via Unclutterer] More »

Best Non-Obvious Tip for Setting Up a Home Office?

9:00AM Gina Trapani | The Productivity 501 weblog asked several work-at-homers what the most important, non-intuitive piece of advice they had for anyone setting up a home office. Their points ranged from making sure you have a door you can close, investing in a comfortable chair, and keeping an egg timer on hand to remind yourself to take breaks. Having set up a few home offices in my career, I’d add this: store stuff in a way that makes it easy to use (put stamps with envelopes, paper by the printer, fresh folders on or in the filing cabinet, pens and paper within reach, etc.) What’s your best tip for making your workspace (at home or at the office) better? Let us know in the comments. Advice for Setting up a Home Office – Group Interview [Productivity 501] More »