These days, the idea of the ‘home office’ has gone from one of those things that might be nice to have someday, to something a lot of people needed to have, right away.
As the pandemic forced much of us to adapt to working from home, many of us found ourselves struggling to create the right space and atmosphere to work within. Those of us lucky enough to have a spare room for our home offices had an easy time making the transition, but most of us just didn’t have the home layout or the extra room needed, since any spare rooms were already given over to children’s bedrooms or personal storage.
Accordingly, many of us had to create a home office wherever we had the space. Sometimes we had a nook in the living room, sometimes we had a corner in the basement where our wifi could reach, sometimes we just made do with a laptop at the kitchen table.
The more adventurous of us turned to that old solution for open apartments and wider spaces: room divider shelves! By aligning shelves to create a space around themselves, a lot of people are finding themselves a little more comfortable in whatever office space they can find.
What Are Room Divider Shelves?
The key to this method is to understand what, exactly, a room divider shelf is. Room divider shelves are never a specific type or style of shelf; instead, they’re any sort of home shelving that can be used to create space in an open room where there’s not much division.
For example, a common usage of room divider shelves is the use of home bookcases to separate a kitchen from a living room in studio apartments, or modern homes where the main floor is more ‘open’. By lining an area with bookcases, or other types of shelving, you can create a better division between spaces and define specific rooms easier than before, all without costly, permanent remodels such as divider walls. (Plus, they can still help maintain that ‘open’ feeling by providing space between the floor and ceiling!)
While these can be great for many homes, right now they’ve become a particularly convenient way to create home office space wherever it may be needed.
Using Room Divider Shelves to Create A Home Office
When was the last time you thought to yourself “dang, I could use a little more privacy when I’m trying to work”, this may be the solution for you.
First, take a look at wherever your home office is right now. Maybe it’s a corner of the living room, maybe it’s that table in the dining room nobody uses anymore (since we all eat in front of the TV anyway these days, right?), maybe it’s somewhere down in the basement near the pool table. Wherever it is, see how much open space is around your home office desk – can you walk right up to your desk? Is it in a corner? Do you face a wall, or away from something else for convenience sake?
Generally, when using room divider shelves to create a home office space, your primary aim is to frame your office. You don’t want to lock yourself into a tiny space where you might feel too cramped, or your family might not feel welcome coming to talk to you – instead, you’ll just want to create a cozier area where you can put your head down and focus on whatever it is you’re doing.
To that end, you’ll want to use more ‘open’ shelves like the aforementioned bookshelves, home wire shelving, or even something like file cabinets to combine space definition with more practical storage. This can create a little more open atmosphere for your home office, and reduce the feeling of working in one of those dreaded cubicles that everyone seemed to hate in the 90s.
Try arranging them in an L-shape around your desk – enough space to enter from one way, but not cramped enough to reduce your movement or make you feel uncomfortable while you’re in there.
Obviously this will need some arranging on your behalf, and the approach you take may vary depending on how much space you’ve got in your office, but once you get it all figured out, working from home may be more comfortable than ever.
