Finding Time To Organize While Being a Busy Professional (Part 1: Your Workspace Area)

Being organized is an everyday struggle, especially your home office. It is soooo easy to get distracted if you are anything like me! In this blog, I discuss solutions that I have found helpful that can take you from zero to hero (well at least just your S.O will think you are!)

How are we suppose to find time to clean, stay organized, take care of our health, children, family, work, and so on?! Well, first off we are not robots, we are humans. Everyone is different in so many ways and to be honest, we didn’t get a “how to do life” book….Tasks like organizing or cleaning can seem so overhwleming and the thought of having to do it is daunting and can literally just feel like you dont even know where to start. There are many ways we can make our everyday struggles much more simple. This is my version on how I did and in hopes it would help a busy professional like me. Today, we are focusing on our workspace area.

*(Side Note, I work from home, my day to day experiences may not relate to everyone).

If you WFH and live in a small apartment like me, finding the ability to sit, do work, and focus can be sometimes difficult. Whether you have cats, dogs, children, the laundry, the yard, the chores..ahhh…. It can be so distracting and overwhelming!

First thing that I realized was that I needed a whole seperate working area that would really set me up for success. I evaluated my space, items, and what I needed to get organized was the first step. In this blog, I will give you my personal experience on how to stay organized while being a busy professional and a few key takeaways on how to improve your space and clear your mind.

(*Side note: I do not recommend to start organizing in every single room as this can become too much and I found out the hard way. *Sigh*. Therefore, you may not get anything done at all. I believe breaking it down room by room, writing a list and going from there is the best way to start in terms of overall organization – PS it takes time and patience, trust the process!)

First, everyones experience is going to be different…however, we all start at the same spot; the beginning. When I started working from home at the beginning of covid, I had ZERO space where I could just plop my entire desk (or at least the stuff I needed to do work) in a room. Oh no, I had to strategically consider how I was going to do this. So, I started working in my kitchen because I thought it would be temporary. When we found out WFH was not a temporary situation, I ordered a small desk (under $100) off Amazon and a chair from Target (around $60) that was doable for my space at that time., Overall, It worked until it didn’t. Let me explain…

I honestly LOVED my work area space in my second bedroom that I created and it did it’s job for when I did work from home. It was a desk; it held my laptop, monitor, keyboard, mouse, maybe a few small knick-naks and photos. It worked great for when I needed to work from home for the time I did use it. My desk was very cute, and even had a little draw in it too! (also to mention our 2nd bedroom was known as my fiances and my storage area/closet),

Now, let’s talk about my desk chair in which I also loved, however it was not a good computer chair to be sitting at a desk regularly for 8-9 hours a day when you already have a spine that looks like a noodle (aka that’s me).

At the time, I was only working on occasion (about once a month) at home in late November 2020 until about seven months ago when that changed.

To date, I have been working from home full-time and my workspace and living space was cluttering my mind and space (pun intended ha!) I knew I could not work in that type of environment where distractions were everywhere upon me and my ADHD was not helping. (Mind you, our apartment is the average 2 bedroom multi-family with the second bedroom literally being the “dumping ground’ for storage, clothes, etc. (if you know, you know). I could not bare to look at it even having my head turned away, I was A. either super distracted thinking about it, or B. needed to get up frequently to organize and clean. This was not setting me up for success one way or another.

Working in the living room sounds fun, on the occasional “I’m not feeling my best today, but I am still going to show up”. It is NOT fun when you make it your full-time working space. How do I know? well, I did it for 2 months. I got a lapdesk from Homegoods and I made it work until I could figure out a better work space for me (I had to budget this if I wanted my dream work area).

I kept putting ideas on my Pinterest board and browsing amazon here & there envisioning the space I had to work with, and thinking to myself was it going to make a difference, and will I actually want to sit there and get work done without complete overwhelm of my house? It really was very strategic process for me. I had to save money and get the decor I wanted to make it a space that typically feels like a work area for me while adding my personal touch to it.

I currently now have an AMAZING work space set up in my bedroom and with the sunlight shining in, a plant on the wall, a computer chair and desk from facebook marketplace. Most of my desk decor was from Amazon and homegoods.

While we all wish we had our own executive office, there are so many ways to make your space work for you. The beggining is the hardest part to start. Each day I had to write down my goals and vision board of how I wanted my space entirely to look like. Again, it takes time and patience. I had started to organize specifically my work space area (aka Part 1). There are so many great books, vision boards, pro’s on the internet that are easily accessible to us, you just need the will to get started. Make your workspace work for you!!!!

*The book I recently picked up to start was “The Home Edit – Life” by Clea Shearer & Joanna teplin at Target.

Stay Friendly & I hope you find some helpful information from my experiences 🙂

xo Sarah

#amazon #target