My home office tour
I love to sticky beak at people’s offices. I like to see how they organise their spaces, what equipment they use and how they set everything up.
So I thought that if I liked to see that stuff then some of you guys might like to see it as well! So today I’m going to share some images of my own home office set up and all the different equipment and things that I use.
I am soon going to be changing my office space around a bit as I want to replace the desks that we currently have with sit/stand desks. I am spending way too much time sitting at the moment and I want the option to be able to easily stand for a good portion of the day, without it being disruptive to my work. I do have a small standing desk at the moment, as you’ll see below. But ever since hubby has been at home working due to COVID he’s the one who has been standing there! So I haven’t even got a look in with it. :)
So I’ve decided all desks have to go - and instead I am going to get two sit/stand desks. One for me and one for my husband. But that will all be part of another blog post down the track….
What I thought I would do today is just share some images of my space as it is at the moment and let you know some of the key pieces of equipment that I use, just in case that’s of interest or helpful for your own home office set up.
Now one word of warning - I have only tidied up a little bit in these images. So they are a little bit messy in some places. But I’ve left some things out that are critical to my daily routines, just so I can point them out to you. They make the photos quite ugly though - so just keep that in mind haha!
So let’s start with an overview of the office itself.
As you can see we’ve got quite a nice sized room and there are some stairs which lead to a loft above. This is all a bit weird and annoying if I’m honest, but the loft was there when we purchased the house and I’m not going to spend money removing it. I will share what I’ve done in the loft another day - I’ve basically set it up as a reading and play space for the boys, so it’s quite nice up there.
The stairs are deadly though! So I don’t really like them coming up and down all that much…that’s a whole other problem!
This side of the room is my desk space. Here’s a few things to point out about it:
I have positioned the desk facing the window as it’s not only nice to look out (we live on the edge of a National Park so I look out at the bush, which is lovely), but the natural daylight facing me is really good for the videos I record each week.
I have a heater under my desk, which is almost permanently on during winter. As I get up at 5am it can be VERY cold….but the heater keeps me warm :) This is a Dyson heater/fan, it’s very effective.
My chair is the Hay ‘About a Chair’ and I have a sheepskin over it in winter as it’s so cold sitting on the hard plastic otherwise. The sheepskin normally goes away in summer. My family calls it my ‘rat’….I admit it doesn’t look all that nice, but it’s very cosy.
My desk is actually a small dining table from Green Cathedral. It’s such a great size for my large computer screen with plenty of room to spread my other work out as well.
The ergonomics of my set up aren’t good at all, which is why I’m looking at getting the sit/stand desks. I have given myself an RSI injury in my shoulder and my lower back is quite often very sore from sitting for very long periods, so I am very keen to do something about how my set up is all working.
The Aboriginal artwork you can see to the left was a gift from my Dad.
The rug is from Globe West and is not only nice as it’s comfier than having your feet on the hard wood floor, but it also helps to absorb sound for when I’m doing my recordings.
Next to my desk you will see I have my camera on a tripod all set up and ready to film. I do record stuff regularly for my online courses and other things I need, so it’s helpful to just have the camera ready to go when I need to record things. I also have a light ring that I use to just improve the lighting in my videos as well. On my camera I have an external mic attached, but I’m not very happy with the sound quality from that so I’m soon going to be looking at upgrading that to something better.
If you’re interested in the camera equipment, here’s what I use:
Canon EOS 70D camera
Light ring: Spectrum Aurora 19” LED ring light kit (Diamond Luxe V1)
Next to my desk I have a wall shelf, which really just is there to look nice. I used to have my desk pushed up to that wall, so the wall shelf made a bit more sense when the desk was orientated that way, but I prefer it under the window so I can access the light so now the shelf looks a bit random.
I also have my ugly printer sitting next to me at my desk. When I’m designing a home office from scratch I love to build some joinery that can hide the printer and get it out of site, but sometimes we just have to deal with ugly things because of their practicality. I use this to print off the labels for the welcome packages that I send out to my SketchUp students, so I’m accessing that printer daily.
On the desk itself there’s a few things to point out:
my computer is an iMac Pro
the large ugly drink bottle is a promotional gift from my protein powder supplier, but it holds 2L of water. I try and drink 2-3 of these bottles each day, so I left it in the picture to just mention that to you (despite how ugly it looks!!!)
My notebook is also something I use every day. I get these from Baron Fig and they have a really nice cloth cover and dot grid inside. I’ve been using these notebooks for years now.
Attached to the RH side of my desk I have a boom arm and microphone. This is attached to my computer and I use this every day to record additional videos that I send to my course students and for all sorts of other purposes as well - e.g zoom calls. If you’re interested in the equipment, here is what I use:
Stadium MICARM Microphone boom arm
Audio-Technica ATR2100 Microphone
Microphone Pop Filter Screen that just clips on over top of that
I also have a tray of daily used stuff there as well. This holds things like stamps for my envelopes, pencils, glue stick, sharpener…all those ugly sorts of things you need at your desk.
I also have some tray files, bought from Country Road a while ago, that hold other bits and pieces I use regularly. And I have some books on my desk that I am either reading or referring to regularly.
On the other side of the room are two more desks. The neat one here is normally kept quite neat as it appears in the background of any videos that I do from my desk, so you may recognise this if you’ve watched any of those!
The mess of chords is because we have about 4 laptops that are being charged on the standing desk that sits next to this desk. I didn’t bother trying to clean all those up - it was too hard!
Next to the nice looking desk is a messy looking standing desk. This is where my husband stands for most of the day. He sometimes moves to the desk next to it to take a break as well (but gets in trouble if he leaves his mess behind haha!).
The standing desk was just from IKEA and I bought it for myself to use as I wanted to try and stand more during the day. But as I work at my desktop computer almost all day it wasn’t proving to be very practical for my workflow, which is why my husband is now using it more.
On that desk we also have the smaller label printer that we use to print off the courier labels for the packages that go out to our Passion to Profit students. You can also see some of those packages sitting on the shelf of that desk all packed and ready to send out. The rest of the mess is courtesy of my husband :)
And then over in the far corner, under the stairs to the loft is a storage console that has other bits and pieces I use regularly. This area also makes a good backdrop for some of my course videos, so if you’re a student you may recognise this area as well!
A few things to point out:
Lots of people ask about the pinboards - they are from Al and Em
The unit itself is from Globe West
I like for this area to be kept really neat as it makes me happy to have a place that looks nice in the office
Inside the storage console I have all the packed up envelopes for my SketchUp course and my Passion to Profit course. I store boxes full of these upstairs in the loft and bring down boxes and unpack them in to here as I use them up.
We probably send out about 10 of these each day on average, so they do need to be replaced quite often, but I used to just have all the boxes sitting on the floor in my office, and it stressed me out haha! So I am preferring this new system much more.
We also have extra paper and labels and the courier envelopes stored in here as well, as you can see.
And then, as I mentioned, I will share some images of the loft another time, but you can see that I store quite a bit of the ugly office stuff that I don’t have room to store downstairs in the shelves on the landing. There is also some hidden storage behind those shelves, which is where all the boxes are stored for our packed up envelopes. But I will show you all of that another time.
I hope you’ve found that tour of my office interesting and you have picked up some ideas for what you might like to do with your own office. As I mentioned, this is likely going to be changing very soon, so I’ll keep you posted on that!
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Enjoy the rest of your day!
Clare x