Before you invite a client to meet with you in your home office, consider these tips.

Put your stuff away

No one (especially clients) wants to see laundry baskets overflowing with dirty clothes, toys all over the floor, and newspapers that haven’t made it to the recycling bin. If you’re in a hurry, shove stuff in closets until you can put everything away where it belongs. I’m not advocating disorganization, but sometimes last-minute client meetings require desperate measures.

Move your office to a space near your front door

A good way to avoid dragging your clients throughout your home is to convert your dining room or formal living room into a home office. Think about how often you use either room. If you’re like most people, you rarely use those rooms and could use this bonus space as a home office.

Create a space within or near your home office for client meetings

Make your dining room serve double duty as a conference room. If you followed the last tip and moved your office to the dining room, then problem solved. Within that space, consider adding a small kitchen area. A small cabinet stocked with a coffee maker, soft drinks, and water for meetings is all you need.

Hide certain rooms

Before a client comes over, close the doors to any rooms you don’t want them to see. A client may pretend that the mess doesn’t bother them, but it does. Years ago, I was going to hire a freelance designer to create some marketing materials for me, but after I walked through the front of her house and almost tripped on two laundry baskets and a few toys, I worked with a different designer. I was concerned that the chaos in her house was going to spill over into her business.

Make sure your family knows when a client is coming over

There are some things you can’t un-see. It took me a week to get over seeing a freelancer’s husband in his Speedo as he was walking to their pool during our meeting. I was more disgusted, than he was embarrassed!

When you design your home office or move it to another room in your home, keep your clients in mind. While you want to develop a good relationship with your clients, they don’t need to know about or see every part of your personal life.

Do clients visit your home office?

The right furniture, combined with a little creativity (and the right tips), can help you make the most of your home office space.

source: Hooker Furniture

1. Use modular furniture. With the exception of one home office, I’ve used modular furniture in all of my home offices. Modular furniture is easy to move around and lets you change your office as your needs change. When you use built-ins, you limit your options. The exception to built-ins is when you’re using a non-traditional space, for example a dining room, for a home office. While the cabinets and drawers in a dining room could be designed for home office use, the same cabinets and drawers could hold dishes and anything else someone may use in a dining room.

source: The Container Store

2. Add more storage. Sturdy shelves or tall bookcases can make a big difference in a home office. One of the biggest problems I see in home offices is not enough storage. If you don’t have a closet or a cabinet to store supplies, books and sales materials, most of that information gets stacked all over the floor. When you move everything off the ground and onto shelves, you have more room to work and you don’t risk tripping over something in your home office.

source: Grandin Road

3. Make one piece of furniture serve more than one purpose. The top of a lateral file cabinet can double as an extra surface for an all-in-one machine or an extra stand-alone printer. Look in your garage, attic, basement or storage room for a dresser you could hold use to hold extra supplies in drawers or behind doors. Even a simple bench with storage below can give you extra home office seating along with room to hold files or supplies below.

source: Pottery Barn

4. Be creative.  Need a new desk? Use two file cabinets with a board across them. If you need more workspace, add more cabinets and a board. This trick used to be reserved for starving college students, but I’ve seen expensive home offices furnished this way using high-quality file cabinets and durable surfaces. This is an inexpensive, yet stylish way to create a functional workspace.

When you work from home, it’s important to be flexible with your time and schedule. Why not do the same with your furniture?

Being an event planner takes organizing skills, a good design sense and loads of creativity. Event planner Bill Robertson’s home office reflects those skills and more.

A few years ago Bill bought a home, and as part of the renovation he added a home office. His contemporary home office includes a functional U-shape workspace. He uses the surface to the right of his desk to hold his printers, and the shelves below to store extra paper. Behind his desk is a long credenza with plenty of file drawers and supply storage. The exposed, yet painted brick behind his credenza, blends in well with the overall design.

Across from his desk is a seating area that includes a few chairs and a sofa to meet with his staff. One of the best parts of his office is the row of windows that overlook his three-acre backyard. On nicer days, Bill works on his patio surrounded by beautiful landscaping.

Bill plans to expand his staff this year to handle his growing number of clients. Sounds like a good plan.

The three home offices below are small, but have enough space for a desk, a file cabinet or rolling file cart and a twin bed or a double bed. Throughout the years that I’ve been designing and organizing home offices, I’ve learned that size doesn’t matter. A 20’ x 20’ home office is just as functional as a 10’ x 10’ office. It’s all in the way you use the space.

This guest room, complete with a full bath, leaves little room for a desk and file cabinet, but the small closet within the room is large enough to store supplies. With the bed so close to his desk, the owner can always grab a quick nap. Another way to save space in a home office is to do away with a traditional desk, and instead use an “office in a box” for storing equipment and supplies.

If your guest room is going to do double duty, you may want to invest in a day bed, a hideaway bed, or a Murphy bed. This day bed with a trundle below leaves enough room for a desk and a rolling file cart. A dresser opposite the window doubles as clothing storage for guests and office supply storage for the owner.

The double bed in this guest room takes up most of the space, but there’s enough room for a compact desk. The small closet in the room provides extra storage for supplies, product samples and files.

It doesn’t matter whether you use a guest room as a home office or a home office as a guest room. What matters is that you put a rarely-used room to work.

Is there a rarely-used room or space in your home that you’ve turned into a home office?

So, I’ve redesigned my home office again.

I started my home office makeover from the ground up, by adding a new rug with circles in different colors and sizes. Whether you pick an area rug, wall-to-wall carpeting, or keep the floor bare, keep sound reduction in mind to avoid the “cave effect” when you’re on the phone.

Normally, my next step would have been to pick out furniture, but since my furniture is fairly new I used the desk and bookcases I already had in my home office. My desk with a return gives me plenty of room for my laptop, external hard drive, all-in-one and lamp. I use the keyboard drawer to hold extra printer paper, and the cabinet that was meant to hold a CPU is perfect for storing extra supplies.

I bought two chairs at my favorite commercial furniture store. One is an animal print chair for reading, and the other is a tan desk chair. Behind and next to my reading chair are an iron floor lamp and a small round table.

I had installed the woven shade last year, but to soften the room I added striped drapery panels. The artwork that was next to the window was boring, so to add a bit of color and interest I found a print from a site that features works from independent artists. Rather than buy the print already framed, I had it framed locally.

Next, I replaced my ceiling fan (it came with the house) with a beautiful pendant. Then I added a few more things to my desk including a multi-circle frame and three jars to hold paper clips, rubber bands and markers.

My new home office is exactly the look I’ve wanted for awhile. It suits me perfectly for now, but I may need to stop looking at so many home office photos!

Some people think that if you’re creative, you can’t be organized. Watercolor artist Laura Trevey proves them wrong.

Her perfectly organized yet creative art studio/home office includes a custom island designed by Laura, with shelves wide enough to store 26” x 40” watercolor paper. Most of the time the island is in the center of the room, but casters on the bottom of the island make it easy for Laura to move it anywhere.

It isn’t uncommon to create an inspiration board or wall, but one made from pegboard is ingenious. Laura installed a 5 ½’ x 8’ pegboard to showcase her inspiring watercolors, both framed and unframed. The pegboard, painted the same color as her walls, is framed with white trim.

On the wall across from her desk is a row of cabinets that she uses to store supplies. The floors of her art studio/home office are a light wood and are easy to clean, especially in the case of spilled paint.

Next to her Ikea desk, created by using two trestles and a glass, beveled edge top, is a rolling drawer unit that serves double-duty as a printer stand. Above her desk is one of her stunning, original watercolor paintings.

The next time you think creativity and organization don’t mix, consider Laura’s advice, “An organized office is a happy one.”

• Start by measuring your home office space (including alcoves, windows, doorways and closets).

• Do a rough sketch of your home office and plug in all the measurements. Your sketch doesn’t have to be pretty, just accurate.

• Using graph paper, redraw your sketch to scale (one square equals one foot). Or transfer your sketch to a computer-aided design program (CAD). I use CAD instead of drawing plans by hand because it’s easier to create several layouts for my clients. But unless you’ll be creating plans often, don’t invest in a CAD program. It can be expensive.

• Measure your existing furniture and either make templates that you can move around on the paper or draw the furniture directly on the paper. Before you draw any furniture, make a few copies of your drawing so you don’t have to erase as often.

• Before you shop for furniture, measure doorways and stairways to make sure that any furniture you buy will fit through doors or up the stairs. A friend of mine bought furniture he knew would fit in his home office, but forgot about the furniture making it to the second floor. When the delivery team couldn’t get the furniture up the stairs, he sent both pieces back to the store.

• Take your drawing with you when you go furniture shopping to make sure that whatever you want to buy will fit in your home office. Don’t forget the doorway and stairway measurements. Your drawing will also give you a good idea of how large an area rug can be.

When you plan ahead, designing your home office doesn’t have to take much time or money. The key is to measure twice, buy once, and enjoy your office daily.

With four kids at home, five years and younger, Heather set up her home office in the corner of her large dining room. She felt that it was “necessary to be near all the action.” Anyone with small children can relate.

Her 6 1/2′ x 2′ desk is made from a base she rescued from her kitchen. On the base is an antique door with a piece of glass on top to give her a smooth work surface. She cut out the drawers in the base to make room for her CPU and printer.

Above her desk is a hutch made out of 1’ x 8’ boards, with cubbies that hold her office supplies and products. She painted the hutch in a distressed gray after her facebook friends helped her decide which color to use. Next to her desk is a dresser to store more supplies.

In addition to using a black lunchbox to hide ugly cords — she cut a hole in each side— she uses a jar to hold business cards and has binders decorated with brown paper bags and antique lace.

As someone who loves to share her handmade creations and ideas, this home office reflects her personality, her creative talent and her ability to save money.  The only cost for the entire project was the boards for her hutch.

Clients calling at all hours, weekend showings and indecisive buyers can take their toll on any businessperson, including a realtor. This 24/7 realtor has been working from home in the same spare bedroom for 16 years. She was fine working in her “creative” space until some important papers got lost in the shuffle (literally).

She has two workspaces: one is a computer workstation and the other is a desk she uses to spread out papers. To the right of her computer desk is a four-drawer lateral file cabinet. To the left is a small two-drawer cabinet with her huge printer balanced on top.

Behind the desk is a tall bookcase with a copier and a vertical file holder on top.

What Works:

Between the six file drawers, plus the drawers in her desk and computer workstation, filing space isn’t an issue.

Both desk chairs are ergonomically correct.

She has room to spread out papers, and has all the technology she needs to run her business.

Prescription for change:

Combine the two separate work spaces into one, by turning the desk 90 degrees to the right so it faces the door and creates an L-shape arrangement with her computer workstation. At that point, she will need only one desk chair, not two.

Move the four-drawer cabinet to the wall opposite from the computer workstation and put the bookcase behind the desk. Move the computer desk to the left a few feet and then put the two-drawer cabinet to the right side of the computer desk. By moving the computer desk to the left, there will be room for the two-drawer cabinet to open without hitting the bookcase.

Create extra workspace on the computer workstation by moving the CPU to the floor.

Replace the photos on the bookcase shelves with a desktop file holder that uses hanging folders with manila (interior) folders inside. Also, use decorative containersto store the supplies that are currently on the four-drawer file cabinet and on the desk and put them on the bookcase shelves within reach.

One final suggestion, after sorting through the pieces of paper on the desk, consider finding a better way to store cash.

If you want to change your home office, you can, and you don’t have to spend a fortune. The right rug, furniture and even accessories can affect the look and function of your space.

Start with a few basics.

• Find furniture that fits. Look at the desk you’re using now. Is it too big or too small for your home office? Are you constantly stacking papers and anything else that doesn’t fit on your desk on the floor?Before I moved into my new home office, I measured the space and figured out how big my desk could be. I found a medium-size desk and return with tongue-in-groove detailing (it’s better to have a desk with drawer fronts that aren’t glued or nailed onto the drawer). The L-shape desk fits in my office and I still have room for a chair and two bookcases.

• Use a rug to absorb sound. The hand-scraped, hardwood floors in my home office get an A for beauty and an F for soundproofing ability. Before I put a rug in my office, people kept asking me if I was calling from a tunnel. I added an area rug that absorbs sound and gives my office some color.

• Install window treatments. Aside from providing color and pattern in a home office, window treatments can add additional soundproofing. And if you’re literally working naked, your neighbors will appreciate your window treatments too.

• Add artwork. Interesting and colorful artwork can change the look and feel of your home office. Before you hang anything, plan ahead. A good rule of thumb is to place the center of the artwork or grouping at eye level (take into account whether people will be standing or sitting in that area). Don’t let the artwork take over the space. Everything should be to scale and in proportion.

Considering how much time you spend in your home office, taking the time to make a few changes can affect the look of your office and may even change the way you feel about going to work each day, even if your commute is only seconds away.