By: Katie Ellsworth
For about 6 months now, we’ve all been working, socializing, and doing just about everything we can remotely. We spend so much time at our at-home workspaces staring at that same blank wall for hours on end. I found that looking up from my work just to see my bedroom wall isn’t the most invigorating experience. This caused me to dedicate some time to redoing my space in order to help make my long, unenthusiastic days into something a little more exciting. Here are some tips in transforming your at-home set-up into your ideal workspace:
1. The Main Focal Point
I’ve found that having something fun and colorful to look at rather than just a dull, boring wall can help rejuvenate you during the middle of a particularly rough day. This can range from a movie poster to a collage of you and your loved ones. I decided to utilize what painfully few DIY skills I have and create a vision board for my ideal future life. If I’m drowning in schoolwork, I can look at my vision board and tell myself that that is what I’m working toward, and it may be challenging now, but it’ll all be worth it in the end. Make your main focal point something that has this same effect on you. It’ll work wonders on raising your motivation level and help make the hours of work you have feel rewarding.
2. Natural Light
Though I’m definitely guilty of staring outside and completely zoning out when I should be writing an essay, I still think having your workspace situated by a window is super important for your mood. Personally, I’m always happiest when it’s sunny, so having sunlight stream onto me through my window as I annotate 40+ page readings doesn’t only brighten my room, but my mood, as well. In fact, exposure to sunlight is thought to increase the brain’s release of serotonin, a hormone that boosts your mood, meaning you should totally sit in the sun for a bit if you’re not feeling too great. If you’re not able to have your workspace near a window to receive that sweet sunlight serotonin, take a walk outside when it’s sunny or sit on your lawn to let the sun’s rays hit you to give you the same feeling of calmness.
3. Make it Yours!
A huge aspect of making your ideal workspace actually yours is adding a bit of your own personal touch to it, whatever that may mean to you. Are you someone who’s a big fan of planning and organizing? Then get some cute pen/pencil holders (maybe even paint or decorate them if you’re a DIY kind of person) to display all of your writing tools. Are you a big music lover? Perhaps writing a list of your top songs for studying, de-stressing, jamming out to when you’re taking a break, and displaying it where you can easily glance at it would be up your alley! Adding these seemingly small personal touches to your workspace, truly make it yours, and will help you actually enjoy your time spent there, because it’s more fitting to your style and interests.
Of course there are many more ways you could renovate your workspace to make it perfect, these are just a few simple tips that have worked really well for me. It’s an extreme challenge to spend your time working and your time relaxing in virtually the same space. Not only does it cause you to blend your work and rest areas, it absolutely gets mind-numbing to be in the same area every day. Once I spent some time redecorating my at-home workspace to make it ideal for me, I started to look forward to spending my time there everyday. I began feeling more professional in a way, since I started treating that area as my “private office” of sorts. I can almost guarantee that following at least one of the tips I mentioned above will help you feel a bit better about being stuck at a desk for such prolonged periods of time. I truly believe in taking care of ourselves, mentally and physically, and redoing your at-home workspace so that it’s perfectly ideal for you is an amazing form of self care since it’ll affect you every single day. So have some fun with redoing your workspace, and make sure to take care of yourself!