Christmas Cleaning: Clutter-free Productive Home Office
Update (30 Nov 2010): I've moved again and I have a new home office now. Make sure to check it out.
OK, so after we've moved to our new apartment I got my very own room to set up my very own home office where I'd be productive when at home... and I wanted a true clutter-free experience. As you know, in the past I managed to pack all of my office-related stuff into an Ikea cabinet but this time around I was aiming at an Apple-style-designed big, clean, lean and clutter-free desk. This is the outcome:
There you go, from the left there is my Canon MP110 Printer and scanner (it's so far on the left that you can't see it, but you'll see it on the other photos), a 21-inch Gateway external monitor (aligned vertically - I prefer it that way), my Macbook Air, GTD-style folders and iPhone dock, my previous main machine: X60 Thinkpad TabletPC (docked) which my wife is currently using, my Toshiba M200 TabletPC (acting as my home server) docked and accessible only with Wacom active digitizer pen, GTD-inboxes and a document shredder.
Interested? I've got more pictures for you and the setup photos below.
Step 1 - big desk with lots of free space
I started out with a big desk Apple-style without anything on it or attached to it. It even doesn't have any legs, sweet pure and beautiful place to work. So I started digging around it, making holes and putting first wires:
Step 2 - preparing "cage" to attach to the bottom of the desk with chargers inside
I bought a clothing drawer in a local superstore and cut it to fit my space below my desk:
Step 3 - prepare the wires and chargers
There are lots of chargers and wires we need to prepare to put "below" our desk:
Step 4 - make sure you have enough "juice"
I need lots of "power sources" to power all these little tiny devices and all my computers, so here goes - two (eventually I ended up with 4 when I realized how many power outlets I really needed) power lines:
And additional "chimney" for ad-hoc power on the desk (clutter-free power):
Step 5 - put the cables and stuff into the "cage" and attach them with plastic straps
Step 6 - install power juice and make sure all the cables are in place
Step 7 - realize you have to few power outlets and install more, install cage
Some design details - how I attached the "cage" with all of my stuff:
It's nice to use a plastic pipe to make sure the details look really nice:
Step 8 - install a "charger basket"
I got this idea from unclutterer and I liked it a lot, here's my basket with all the outlets for mobile phones, camera and digicam in one place:
Step 9 - move everything around and attach your last cables
After I've done my initial version I had to do it all over again to make sure everything is in the right place:
Step 10 - enjoy your new clutter-free and beautiful office space
Here's my left side of desk:
And here's my right side:
Here's what's in front of my eyes when working:
Hope you liked my very lengthy blog post and you got inspired to get a clutter-free place to work.
And there is one more thing....
Don't try to pull it off on your own! Always get help from someone qualified to help you with this kind of setup, luckily my daughter (11 months young) gladly helped:
How is your home-office? Do you work from home? How is your real office? Enough room to be creative?
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I'm Michael Sliwinski and I'm an entrepreneur who's also the...
.. Founder of Nozbe.com - a time and project management web application
.. Editor of Productive! Magazine - a global PDF publication on productivity
.. and a blogger as well as a producer of a weekly 2-minute Productive! show.
I'm Michael Sliwinski and I'm an entrepreneur who's also the..... Founder of Nozbe.com - a time and project management web application
.. Editor of Productive! Magazine - a global PDF publication on productivity
.. and a blogger as well as a producer of a weekly 2-minute Productive! show.
23 comments
Dec 23, 2009
Stefano Ricciardi said...
Love your setup. Hope I'll be able do to something like this myself next year. My desktop space is really shrinking!
Dec 24, 2009
Michael Sliwinski said...
Shrinking desktop is very limiting and adds distractions to your surrounding... I had trouble getting stuff done with limited space... it really pays off to have lots of space around and only a few items visible...Thanks for your comment Stefano and have a Merry Christmas!
Dec 25, 2009
Michael Sliwinski said...
Wanted to make sure I get to finish my clutter-free desktop before Christmas so that I could enjoy it asap. Glad you like it, Jordi, thanks for your comment!
Dec 28, 2009
Nejc said...
Very nice! I'm working on my desk, but here's a little charging station I came up with: http://produktiven.si/index.php/2009/11/28/izdelaj-polnilno-postajo-za-8-evrov/
Dec 28, 2009
Michael Sliwinski said...
Really cool charging station Nejc! Fantastic, good looking and very practical for all the mobile stuff that needs to be charged. Good job!
Jan 01, 2010
b said...
Good and inspiring post. I studied it with interest and came across a typo: I think you meant unclutterer.com, not declutterer. ;-)
Jan 04, 2010
Michael Sliwinski said...
I've corrected the link to unclutterer.com - thanks for your comment and welcome to the new uncluttered 2010!
Jan 19, 2010
kemal said...
I just love this workplace.I am planing to install same way but i was wondering that what kind of wood is this and what type of support did you used?
Jan 19, 2010
Michael Sliwinski said...
The wood is just double-size of the standard furniture wood and the support is very tough - steel pipe (rounded square shaped) mounted in the walls. I just didn't want any "legs" and wanted this to be unbreakable. Right now it's so tough that you can dance on this table and nothing happens :-) Good luck with your workspace!
Jan 19, 2010
Michael Sliwinski said...
The two layers of furniture wood are glued together and the metal pipe goes right in the middle of desk along the whole desk (from side to side - coast to coast :-) - you can see the pipe in the photo in Step 7.
Jan 20, 2010
Michael Sliwinski said...
I had it custom made by my carpenter and this is why it worked. Good luck with your setup!
Jan 24, 2012
Chris said...
Very nice setup. And a beautiful little girl you have, too. Where an I get one of those cool Nozbe chair mats?
Jan 24, 2012
Michael Sliwinski said...
My father was running an ad-agency and he gave me this Nozbe mat as a gift - love it :-) Don't have any new left, I'm afraid but will think about them maybe for our best Nozbe users - thanks for your kind comment Chris!
