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Tiny Bedroom Becomes Efficient Office! - 10th May 2016
Judith Hanson is a Northamptonshire based hypnotherapist who works from home.
Judith consulted me prior to a house move as she knew she needed to reduce and organise her office content before moving it all to its new location.
Judith's decision to declutter first was a good one. After all, why pack and move a lot of content that is actually obsolete?
Like most businesses Judith's had evolved and changed over time. As is often the case a lot of historic information was still stored in her office just taking up space. Over the course of a couple of sessions I helped Judith identify arm loads of obsolete documents and stationery; most of which was recycled.
So far so good!
I was called back after the move. Judith was now in a slightly smaller house, or at least the room sizes were different. She had decided it would be wise to locate her practice room in a log cabin at the bottom of the garden. Great decision! Judith needs her home to be a personal space for her own relaxation. It would be far less easy to achieve this if she chose to work with clients in her living area. Mixing work and home can be very demanding of space, not just in the practical sense, but also in the sense of head space.
Judith's office needed to be fitted into a fairly small bedroom. This room already had a fitted wardrobe across one wall which consumed valuable floor space. On my first visit I could see that trying to squeeze in a filing cabinet, desk, printer and computer would be like trying to get the proverbial quart into a pint pot! Just to make it even more difficult Judith announced that she really wanted to include a guest bed. I began to think that Judith needed a Tardis rather than a small bedroom for her office.
Whilst my mind was trying to conjoure up a minimalist bed settee Judith said she wanted something much more comfortable for her guests.
I can't say I blame her, some bed settees fail to provide comfort as either a bed or a settee. Judith managed to get an excellent sofa bed which I've seen for myself. She's very pleased with it and its been tested by her grand-daughters (see photo). I like to promote space saving solutions so here's the website for Willow & Hall the sofa bed manufacturer.
Thinking outside the box - goodbye filing cabinet!
At times like this it's important to literally think outside the box. 
Solutions don't need to be conventional - just effective.
Judith told me she'd had the fitted wardrobe added as “office" storage space. She had hoped to fit her printer in there but it was too large and she now wasn’t sure how to organise the space. I suggested she get some shelves fitted below the hanging rail. Instead of using the existing filing cabinet (which was too large for the room and wouldn't fit in the wardrobe) my idea was to use box files on shelves to store paperwork.
Space between shelves should ideally be only slightly more than the height of a box file to maximise space. Different colours of box files would help Judith organise her content with colour-coding. Think red for invoices, blue for supplier information, that kind of thing.
I left Judith to ponder that idea. A family member with a flair for DIY obliged by building Judith's shelves. All she then needed to do was to go box file shopping!
Purchase of a compact desk and no longer having need of a filing cabinet meant that Judith had room for the bed she wanted to buy - so all in all a successful project and proof that even a small room can be multi-functional with a bit of planning.
Judith is very proud of her new office/guest room and I get the impression that she finds the box file system much easier to manage than the old and now defunct filing cabinet.
Definitely a win-win solution!
If you'd like some help with practical space-saving for your home office, please give me a call or drop me an e-mail.
Judith Hanson Hypnotherapy specialises in working with women who have anxiety. Judith is always happy to have a chat and provide more information about how she works.
Keywords: Case study, home office, documents
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