Giving a Personal Touch to our Home Office

Now that all of our technological gadgets have been set up in our home office, we need to give the space a personal touch to avoid having a room in our house that looks like it belongs in an office building.  Our office needs a “homey” feeling that still conveys our personality.

We became inspired by a souvenir from our honeymoon.  We received a name plaque for Peter as a gift for our 3 day stay at the Royal Pita Maha in Ubud, Bali.  We were very pleasantly surprised to receive such a nice gift after such a short stay, and I also received a very fancy sarong as a parting gift. 

Although we had originally planned to put most of our honeymoon souvenirs in the living room where they were placed in our old apartment, the mantle in the new house does not have the space to support all of our knickknacks.  After taking down the mirror that the house was staged with, we discovered a cable jack and power outlets, making this not the best place to put our wooden carvings as the centerpiece to the room.  The mirror quickly went back up on the mantle to cover up the distracting outlets.   

The bookcase that Laura fixed up for us became the perfect place to house all of our Bali souvenirs and some pottery that Peter made in college.  To continue the theme throughout the rest of the room, we decided to hang up two of our paintings from Bali and a Tibetan carved mirror that has the same feeling.  However, now that we have used up all the bookshelf space with fun art pieces, we may need to put up a small bookshelf above the unused desk to house all of our business-related books.   

Our new home office has just the right combination of productivity-related technology and creatively inspired art to help inspire us.  We can telecommute effectively and have a relaxing place to organize bills & correspondence at home. 

Get more tips for creating a stress-free home office from Hooker Furniture expert Lisa Kanarek.

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