Home Office Part 1: The Setup

Home Office Part 1: The Setup

If you work from home, home-school your kids, or are a student yourself, the home office can be the most important room in your house. How your office is set up can determine whether you work efficiently or spend all your time hunting down supplies and clearing off a place to work.

I am a full time student, I do some work from home, and I have three kids who need a place to do homework. It took lots of trial and error to find a setup that worked for everybody. As an extra challenge, my home office is also the main entryway to my home. This meant that on top of my typical office needs, I also needing a landing spot for keys, mail, and bags. We had to get a little creative, but we finally got a system that works for us.


This is the layout of my home office. It's a very odd layout, so it's hard to get a picture of the whole room. These were taken when we first moved in, so it's clean and empty.

Standing right inside the front door, this is the view. Office to the right, living room straight ahead, kitchen in the back right corner.

I have very little wall space, so we had to get creative with the layout.

A large window uses up most of the front wall, and the wall to the left of the door has the garage door, so furniture won't fit there.

We needed 3 main sections: homework area, backpack area, and mommy work area. We also needed to squeeze in the book shelf and filing cabinet.

When considering how you want to set up your home office, take into account the layout and any specific areas you may need. Do you need a craft area? Homework table? Home-school area with room to teach and work? Do you work from home and require a fax machine, phone, or other equipment? Decide what you need before buying or moving anything to save time and money.

In Part 2 we will work on the Backpack Station, perfect for the kids to dump all their school gear when they come home.