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Storage space. If you’re anything like me and have grown up in a house with a bunch of siblings you know how much of a precious commodity storage space is. For anyone designing a home office space this is even more important as you’re often dealing with the smallest space in your house.
So what’s the best way to set up home office storage? What are some cool office space ideas? And what if you have an existing office space?
The following 11 steps will help you maximise your storage space.
Now it’s also worth mentioning that if you’re reading this you’re likely in the market for your own home office storage gear. If this is the case you can check out my recommendations here. Alternatively if you are looking at more than just storage you can have a look at some of the other items I recommend here.
Get your ideas from online sources
We live in a day and age where we have access to so much information at the click of a mouse. As such websites like Pinterest and Real Homes are amazing places to find cool design ideas and get inspiration for quirky and effecting storage spaces.
That being said, it’s worth using these sources responsibly. I mean let’s say you come across an amazing shelving unit but it requires a 50ft ceiling or is made of marble, odds are you’re not going to be able to afford this.
Instead, use the inspiration for colours, styles and to get a layout. Take a note of it, add it to a journal or vision board and move on.
My recommendation: aim to get about 10 – 20 storage ideas together.
Set a budget
So now you have about 10 – 20 storage design ideas the next thing we need to talk about is the benjamins. It’s super important that before we get carried away, to set a budget on the max amount of money you will spend on your storage space for your home office.
So how much money should you spend on storage space? Well ideally we want storage that will actually last as your most likely planning on using your foreseeable future.
I feel a budget of about $1000 is a good budget where you should be able to cover all your storage space and get quality items.
My recommendation: aim for a $1000 budget.
Measure out the space you need
So we’ve got your budget together. Now we need to actually measure out your office space to figure out how much room we are working with.
You can do this in a few ways
- Simply by measuring with a tape measure the length and width of your room
- Using a mobile app like the IOS Measure tool
You want to multiply the length and width together to get the total square footage or meters squared. Once you’ve done this it’s time for the fun stuff
My recommendation: Use a tape measure to get the measurements for your space
Design an office layout
Coming up with a layout is super important for storage as not every item in your office will be storage focus. A lot of people are pushing for desks without drawers or vanity items like bean bags or globes which can take up a lot of room.
You need to visualize everything as much as possible.
How do you do this? Well there are a lot of free design tools out there ( I’ve actually written an entire blog about it here) but my favorite has to be either Roomstyler or Space Designer 3D.
They’re super easy to use and give you a great blueprint of how much room you have to play around with and can even add furniture directly to these. Once you know how much room you have to play around with you will know the exact amount of space you have for storage space and how much free room you will have.
If you’re interested in learning more I’ve come up with a post talking all about the best online interior design tools. You can check it out here.
My recommendation: Use Roomstyler to come up with the blueprint for your storage space
Fit in your essential items
So we have a blueprint. It’s time to start filling in the storage space right? WRONG. We need to put in the essential items first.
Why? Well when I designed my home office, things always look a lot better on blueprint then when you get down to doing it in real life.
As such, we need to get all the important items in first. So tables, chairs, laptops, make a list of all the super important items that aren’t storage related and get them first. This will really give you an accurate image of how much room you have.
Now if you want my recommendations the following Items are what I suggest for your home office:
- Desk ( either standing or sitting)
- Chair
- Laptop
- Monitor (If you like a bigger screen to work from)
- Storage
My recommendation: sort out your table and desk before buying and storage equipment.
Organize your storage for it’s needs
Finally, now we can start looking into storage… but before we get too carried away we need to figure out your storage for it’s needs.
Do you read a lot of books every month? You might need a bookshelf. What about paperwork, do you have a filing cabinet?
Taking consideration of this will really help you come up with a plan. One of the best ways to do this is by categorizing your storage needs into daily weekly and monthly usage. SO everything you will use frequently should be easy to get to and everything you use once in a blue moon can be tucked away.
My recommendation: make a list of everything you will be using your home office for and come up with 10 storage solutions for these.
Pick out three must have items
So by now you should have an idea of all of your storage requirements. If you’re anything like me you probably wanted a vault or a habbidatary ( have you figured out I don’t know what this is).
The sad fact of the matter though is that you will have found from measuring out your room that you probably don’t have enough room for the 10 items you came up with in the previous stage.
As such you need to whittle this list down to the three most important items for storage your office needs. This could be as specific as bed boxes or as broad as filing cabinets, pick up your 3 most important items for the lsit and you will have enough storage to cover the minimum amount of space.
My recommendation: find the 3 most important items for your list of storage items and go after them.
Pick out three nice to have items
The next step is to find the three items that are important but just a little bit out of reach at the moment. Is your bookshelf less your filing cabinet? Feel free to add the filing cabinet to your list.
Why are we doing this? Well at some point some of these items might break down, We want to make sure that you can at least have something to aim for in the future, ensuring that you don’t have to worry about anything.
My recommendations: pick the next 3 items on your list for storage space and keep them for future reference.
Find the best place to source your products
IT’S TIME TO BUY! So you might have been thinking why it is that we went through the whole process before rather than starting with this?
The reason is because now we are specific, you’re going to pick up three items within a certain price range and that’s it. There is nothing worse than going into a store and buying way more than you need.
So where exactly can we source the items from. Usually Amazon is my go to, but other websites like nest.com are great.
It might sound contrarian but I would definitely recommend online if possible as they usually are a much better price and usually come with a money back guarantee..
My recommendations: Go to amazon if you can. If not… make a list of ten stores that sell the types of products you want and visit them in person.
Make sure you are comfortable
Another big one, so you’ve got your storage space and have hopefully installed it by now. One question you need to ask yourself is if you’re comfortable?
Most furniture places have a 14 day money back guarantee if you’re not happy and so if you feel as though something is not right feel free to return it.
Why? You’re going to be in the office more than anyone else so you need to make sure you’re 100% happy with any of your items.
Consider unique alternatives
So hopefully this has helped figure out the best way to sort out home office storage. That being said there are a lot of alternatives when you go down the storage rabbit hole from foldable desks all the way to wall mounted wire shelving.
Whilst I own none of the items below they are interesting to consider if you want something a bit different.
So what are alternative storage ideas for home offices?
To help explain more I’ve broke these down in the table below:
| Type | Benefit |
| Flexible home office storage | Easily movable, great for moving around |
| Foldable desks | Open up a lot of free room when your not using the office to work |
| Peg boards | Completely adjustable depending on the day |
| Desks with built in storage | Saves room and everything is easy to find |
| Wire shelving | Cheap alternative fothen traditional storage |
| Open shelving | Beautiful design although a little bit messy |
| Floor to ceiling brackets | Massively increases the amount of storage space you need |
| Bespoke office storage | Design your storage space exactly how you want it to look. |
Let’s go into more detail on these.
Flexible home office storage
Flexible home office storage is a great option if you’re a bit of a scatterbrain ( like myself). let’s say you want to move things around frequently and love changing things up every few months.,
Flexible home office storage is a great place that will stop you from investing the same bits of furniture again and again.
If you want my recommendations you can find a bunch of flexible home office storage on my resource page here.
Foldable desks
Folding desks are awesome. Easily one of the fastest ways to open up storage space in your room if you have a limited space is to get one of these and whip it out when you need to use it.
Foldable desks can be even more powerful when integrated with something like a folding bookshelf, the Morris desk a good place to start or a dormy
Just be warned that some of the cheaper ones can sometimes, they can be a little bit fiddly, especially if you get your inner wrestler out of you and decide to bodyslam someone through it.
Peg Boards
Peg boards/whiteboards are great if you frequently need to change the items on your storage. The basic idea is that you will hold items with the pegs and when you need to move them, simply move the pegs around.
Again you can look at my recommendations on the resource page.
Desks with built in storage
This is probably the most obvious solution. In fact you can just skip this step if your desk already has storage space. Just having a desk with storage will really make things a bit easier, especially if you want to keep your walls free.
Just be warned they can be slightly more expensive than standard desks without. Again to help my recommendations are in my recommended gear page.
Wire shelving
Wire shelving. Okay this is one for the more hipster focused readers. If you’re not a fan of cork boards or traditional storage methods feel free to go down the route of wire shelving, which is a super easy way to keep your desk clean of mess.
Believe it or not garden traders have some great options, check out there memo board here.
Open shelving
So open shelving is a great way of easily accessing your items, without the need for draws or any of that jazz. Great for the stylishly inclined especially if you like to work on art projects however, be warned, if you’re a little bit on the messy side. This can defiantly lead to you dropping a lot of stuff on the floor.
Floor to ceiling brackets
So floor to ceiling brackets are a good way to avoid a lot of the weight that comes with traditional shelving units.
Floor to ceiling brackets make things a lot easier as they usually can fit on a wall of sheet metal or plastic and again avoids the need for doors.
Great if you need everything at hand.
Bespoke office storage
So if you have a larger wallet then most easily one of the best things you can do, to really be happy with your home office storage is to just get someone in to bespoke design it for you.
A lot of specialists and even mass market providers are starting to offer complete bespoke options. The only downside is that these are a little bit pricey.
What if you have an existing office
So a lot of the content on this post is great if you haven’t designed an existing home office space. But what if you have a home office already and spend a fair bit of money on it.
Well the 11 principles above still apply but I completely understand the monetary cost of redoing an office when you’ve spent a lot of blood sweat and tears on it already.
My suggestion – use something like a freecycle to get fresh storage space sorted – this will definitely be your best option and you can really find some great stuff on there.
What’s the best way to set up home office storage?
There is no other feeling in life then coming home after grocery shopping only to find no room in your refrigerator. Trying to angle in your butter like a game of tetris in between your fruit and veggies or if you’re anything like me, your chocolate and ice cream.
Storage space in your office is no different. Your prime is really going to be working in your home office and so you want to make sure your office is clean and simple and you can just get on with stuff rather than clambering over all the mess in your room just to sit in your chair.
After all, studies show a very significant link between clean rooms and getting more stuff done.
So how exactly do you set up home office storage? Like anything, trying to figure this out without a plan is going to lead to a lot of frustration so hopefully the above 11 steps should help.
Setting up a home office can be tough but did you know that putting your office in the wrong room can potentially lower your house value? To find out more check out this post I wrote here or to find out some hidden costs of setting up a home office have a read of this post here.
Wrapping things up
So hopefully the post today has helped guide you in terms of how to set up home office storage space. I know this was a pretty long post so to break down the most important steps once again:
- Figure out exactly how much storage space you need and what it will be used for
- Put together a budget
- Make a list of the items you want
- Go shopping and stick to your budget
- Customize and add some flair that works for you.
If you’re interested in knowing what I recommend for home office storage you can find that here. Finally a lot of people reading my blog want to know what products I recommend for a home office/remote working. You can find out my recommendations here and learn how I make money whilst working remotely on the side here.
Do you have any home office storage hacks? I’d love to hear your thoughts, Leave a comment below and let me know your thoughts!
Fehed.
The content on this on this site has been written by Fehed Nicass who has over a decades worth of experience in sales and has worked remotely for the past 2 years.