Home Office Makeover

For the last 4 years I've been a work-at-home-mom. It's been such an abundant blessing to be able to stay home with my sweet boys while also working at a job(s) I truly love! And while it's a blessing, it's also challenging for a variety of reasons...the constant battle of balancing time working & time on the floor with the kids, replying to emails in between cooking meals & picking up the house, and maybe the most challenging: finding a productive place to work away from the kid's toys & sticky little fingers!

Any maker can tell you what a mess the process usually is. It often involves spreading out all your materials on a big blank workspace & getting your hands a little dirty. For me this space was usually our dinner table or kitchen island. Which worked well, but I was constantly having to move the kid's toys or coloring projects to make room to screen print pillows. And then once printed, everything needed to dry, which would render our table useless for meals that day. Not a huge deal of course, but a pain nonetheless.

 

This fall we were getting so busy with orders that I decided I finally needed my own designated workspace. I decided to use this space in our basement - it was built to be a future kitchenette/bar area (hence all the outlets & roughed in plumbing), but it's been used as the toy zone since we moved in. Once all the toys were cleared out I was surprised by how big the space actually felt, there's a big glass sliding door on the left which pours in loads of natural light (swoon) and gives it a bright happy feel.

I didn't want to spend a fortune on the space because as our kids grow it may need to evolve into another purpose, so I wanted moveable pieces that could be used in other areas of the house if needed. I found the bulk of what I wanted at IKEA, plus a few additional pieces at Target. Here is the AFTER:

 

The main desk & drawer units against the main wall & the shelving to the right are from IKEA. The island in the middle is something I pieced together myself. The base is two 6-cube shelving units from Target screwed together, and the top is made of two pieces of workbench countertop I found at the hardware store & screwed together to make a nice big workspace to print pillows. On the left is my "backdrop" I made for taking product pictures, (the drawer unit in front of it is on wheels so I can just roll it out of the way when I need to use the backdrop).

 

I LOVE this Alex 6-drawer unit from IKEA. It's great quality for the price, and as I said before it's on wheels which gives it so much versatility in an evolving workspace. I found these Martha Stewart sticky name plates & added them to the drawers to dress them up a bit, I thought it turned out cute :)

I found these cute little white floating shelves on clearance at Target and added a cheery little painting I did & the words "don't quit until you're proud" - In case you missed it, check out our instagram @harmonyhouse_ to see a timelapse of the painting :)

I was pumped to also score these cute feathers on clearance at Target as well!

A fun little plant to hide the unsightly wall outlet, and a SD sign from my favorite sign maker Dwell605 :)

My favorite thing about this space, aside from the giant countertop to spread out on & the bright airy environment, is all the storage!! I use the big IKEA Kallax 12-cube shelf for all of our pillow covers & inserts. I love how organized it is & that I can easily see what we have on hand & what I need to print more of. I also love all the storage in the base of the island. I finally have a place to store our screen printing screens! These suckers take up a lot of space, so it's nice to have a designated spot for them. The island also houses other printing materials as well as loads of shipping supplies. The Alex drawer units I mentioned earlier hold everything else, it's amazing how much stuff can fit in those skinny little drawers!!

So there it is folks, my brand new home office. It's felt like a retreat going to work each day :) Don't let the clean counter & toy-less floor fool you though. The little munchkins still "help" me work all the time & leave an adorable little trail of chaos throughout my personal work oasis, lol, but I wouldn't have it any other way ;)