How to set up your home office as a freelancer – without a home office!
Do you want to learn how to set your home office up for success as a digital nomad or remote worker but you don’t have an entire room available? Then keep on reading for 3 tips that will boost your productivity and motivation while working at home!
If you’re always having back pain from sitting at the breakfast table or working from the sofa, I get it. I used to feel tired early in the afternoon just because I was working in a darker spot in my flat, but with some simple tweaks to my home office, I get into the flow more than ever before.
So, if you are just setting up your new home office or if you want to improve your current setup immediately, these are tips you can realize right now to get your home office setup to the next level!
Tip #1: Choose the right space
The first thing I fixed was choosing the right space for my needs. If you’re in the same situation as me and don’t have an entire room available for a home office, you want to find the best office nook possible before you do anything else.
My 2 most important criteria to choose your space are:
daylight (get as much natural light as possible)
silence/low level of distractions (importance of room or part of the room where you can either work undisturbed OR are out of the way in order not to disturb the people who live with you,
Identify more than one such space in order to be flexible and move in case you disturb each other (e.g. when both are on the phone)
Tip #2: Invest in proper furniture
I always worked at my kitchen table, sat on my bed or on the sofa, and then wondered why I can’t concentrate for long and had back pain constantly. But then I dedicated a corner in my apartment towards only working with a proper desk and chair – or in my case, a sitting ball, which leads me to my first home office item:
proper seating – For me, the seating situation is even more crucial than a proper desk as I always dealt with back pain and found that especially my lower back suffered from sitting on a regular chair for too long. I particularly love this sitting ball because I can bounce around a bit and it forces me to maintain a good posture. (I feel like my ballet teacher would be very proud of me if she saw me sitting so well like this :D)
next, you need a desk that works for you: This can be a real desk or a table that is high enough for you to sit and work comfortably. I decided on a very narrow one where only the necessities fit on. If you are the type who wants to lay out a lot of paper or anything, then a bigger table might be a better fit. Here you can decide if you want that as your dedicated desk or if your dinner table can be both – your desk during the day and your dinner table at night. (This forces you to put back anything work-related after you closed your home office for the day which definitely helps with really stopping work.)
After you got your seating and table ready, I highly recommend getting a laptop stand together with a Bluetooth mouse and keyboard to prevent yourself from crouching over your laptop and falling into a round back. Your screen should always be about the same level as your eyes. This way you look forward instead of down.
At this point in the video I’ve shared the overall setup of my home office, but if you want the EXACT hardware that I use PLUS all software and accessories that helped me in creating my ideal home office space and become more productive, then click the link in my description box to download my FREELANCER STARTER KIT! Not only will it save you time, but it will also set you up for a productive and simplified workday.
Tip #3: Get the right gear for you
One item that helped me enormously was noise-canceling headphones!
Not only since I’m working from home and on the road, but also when I used to work in an office with 20 people, noise-canceling headphones saved my life! I have to write copy the majority of my time and can’t focus on my text the moment somebody else is talking or other noises interrupt my workflow. So, good headphones kept me from losing my sh*t way too many times :D
It also has the benefit of great audio quality without background noise when you have calls and online meetings. Your clients will thank you for that! Trust me!
The next items I got for my home office were storage solutions.
A cabinet for all my working utensils and a box to store files that I don’t need on a daily basis.
Earlier, I was talking about the advantages of using a multi-purpose table for your desk as you have to put away all work-related items and automatically draw the line between work and leisure time more easily. BUT WHERE TO PUT IT? The cabinet is this place for me. After I’m finished working for the day, my laptop, my notebook, and anything work-related go into the cabinet. Huge bonus: It doesn’t need to be super tidy because I can just close the door and the mess is out of sight. It’s a game changer if you struggle to switch off after work.
This box has everything I need for my tax report in one place and I don’t have to panic and search for all the documents and receipts from past years with this dedicated storage spot.
And this is basically it! Keep it simple and smart. More optional things are a desk lamp or a daylight lamp(recommended if you don’t get enough natural light) and a second screen if you have to juggle multiple windows and programs at a time or if it helps you to display things you’re working on on a bigger screen then your laptop.