Saving space in a home office is essential for practicality and organisation – as well as making it easier to clean
It’s almost three years since Boris Johnson appeared on the nation’s TV screens, ordering everyone to stay at home amid surging COVID-19 cases. Since then, millions of people across the UK have found themselves working from home for the first time, joining millions of other people who’d already embraced the time and cost savings of being home-based either part-time or full-time.
Here in 2023, working from home has become the norm rather than the exception. With hybrid working patterns here to stay, many of us spend at least part of each working week padding around in slippers and leisurewear. A home office doesn’t need a door and window to qualify as such – it just needs enough space to fit a desk and an office chair. As a result, many people now work in cramped spare rooms, outsized cupboards or understairs recesses, where space is often at a premium.
Making effective use of every square foot of available floor and wall space isn’t just beneficial for your mental health. It also simplifies the process of tidying and cleaning, especially if you’ve outsourced the latter to Queen of Gleam. We wouldn’t want to pick up and move any potentially confidential or important paperwork, but if it’s cluttering your desk or piled up across the floor, our staff might struggle to banish dust and dirt as effectively as they usually would. To help us help you, therefore, here are five recommendations for saving space in a home office…
1. Add storage up to the ceiling
You can’t have too much storage in a home office space, so if the floor area is limited, look up. Shelving units can stand seven feet high, and wall-mounted shelves are great for filling smaller or awkwardly shaped recesses. Wall-mounted cupboards provide the opportunity to store things at eye level without them being on display, as do wardrobes and stackable filing cabinets.
2. Choose portable hardware
If workspace is also limited, a laptop is a far better purchase than a desktop computer which takes up lots of room and can’t easily be moved. A laptop will fold up and tuck away vertically like a vinyl record, leaving behind a clear desk which we can clean and tidy effectively. Wireless mice and keyboards are also easier to clean around, with fewer cables to get entangled or dusty.
3. Consider a folding workstation
If you’re setting up a new home office, you’re not duty bound to buy a proper desk. The pandemic has seen an explosion in folding workstations which concertina up like a clothes horse when not in use. Another option is a hinged shelf – securely pinned to the wall until it drops down to provide a level, stable base for a laptop and peripherals. These take up almost no room, and look amazing.
4. Invest in a space-efficient chair
It’s lovely to recline in a leather swivel chair with large side bolsters, but these thrones take up lots of floor space. Even those ubiquitous five-wheeled office chairs can be inconvenient. Instead, invest in a well-padded folding chair, which can be hung off the back of a door when not in use. Armrests and lower back support are advisable if you’ll be using it all day, along with generous base padding.
5. Minimise paper trails
Lever arch box files and foolscap folders quickly fill up with paperwork and post if you’re not careful. Buy a scanner and digitise incoming post or paperwork. Opt out of written bank statements, using PDFs or Word documents wherever possible. Back up scans and documents in the cloud if they’re valuable, and then shred, burn or securely dispose of archived paperwork to save space.
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