Home Office Setup - Do-it-yourself

• DIY - device
  • Wall paint
  • Desk & storage space
• You have to buy that
  • IT equipment
  • desk chair

Better reconciliation of work and family life, great flexibility in working hours and a high degree of self-determination - working from home brings many benefits. At the same time, however, it presents a great challenge. It takes a lot of discipline now and then to be able to concentrate on the essentials within your own four walls. Therefore, it is particularly important to create an efficiently designed and separated workspace for the home office. Such does not always have to be expensive. If you manufacture your furniture using the DIY process yourself, you can save on many points and set up your own office.

DIY - device

Wall paint

You can easily do the painting of the walls yourself. If you have not had any experience, you can get advice from professionals online or in the hardware store. You must stock up on the following utensils:

• Color (In this regard, you should measure the size of your room in square meters before buying, because the number of liters of color depends on it)
• Tarpaulins for the floor, doors, radiators and windows
• Masking tape for floor strips, door frames, sockets and light switches
• Rollers and brushes for applying the paint
• Abstreichgitter
• Wooden stick to stir the paint, so that the color pigments spread evenly and the paint on the entire wall gives a smooth picture.

The color is especially a delicate white. Such provides the necessary brightness and brings peace to the room, which helps you focus on what's important at work. Avoid dark colors in any case because they irritate the eye and make the brain tense with superfluous color impulses.

Desk & storage space

At the heart of every workroom is the desk. In any case, such should have a sufficiently large work surface so that all IT equipment can fit on it. Additional space should be included for storing folders and other work materials. Basically, you can make a simple model with just a few materials:

• A wooden plate = work surface
• 2 wooden boards = feet
• 4 angles
• screw
• cordless drill

In the specialized trade you can receive all utensils as well as let the wood panels in the desired size be cut to size. Then you just need to connect the four feet by angles in each corner with the table top.

To maintain order and clarity in your room, you should create ample storage space by sorting folders and storing unneeded work materials. For this purpose, shelves are suitable on the wall. For the do-it-yourself variant, you need the following:

• A number of boards (depending on how many shelves you want to mount)
• An adequate number of angles (at least two pieces per shelf)
• screw
• cordless drill

First, attach the brackets to the wall, then place the boards on top and connect them to the brackets with screws. Here you should work very carefully and make sure that you attach the shelves straight to the wall. This can be achieved by using a spirit level during assembly.

Tip: Your home office is particularly appealing if you choose the desk and the shelves in the same type of wood. The furniture then fits visually perfectly together and gives a uniform picture.

You have to buy that

IT equipment

In order to be able to work professionally in your home office, you need appropriate equipment for hardware and software.

The hardware includes:

• PC with keyboard and mouse as well as a sufficiently large screen or laptop
• Telephone or headset (possibly webcam for video calls)
• Reliably functioning WLAN connection
• An external hard drive that allows you to make regular backups to keep your data secure.

The software includes:

• A Commercial Software: With Lexware's Financial Office Plus business software, you have a complete enterprise package that's particularly useful when you're self-employed and need to do bookkeeping and calculate wages and salaries for potential employees.
• A program for further business organization: With Microsoft Office you can, for example, send emails via Outlook and coordinate your appointments. It also includes a copywriting program that you can use to write customer letters, for example. Power Point makes it easy for you to create lectures, while Excel lets you do spreadsheets. A free alternative is OpenOffice.
• VPN Access: If you are not working from home alone because you have a corporate office that has a computer with all your data, you should set up VPN access. With such, you have access to all important data from the company not only from the home office, but equally while working on the go. What is a VPN - for the video explanation.

desk chair

With the desk chair you should pay attention to good quality, because the sitting behavior influences your health well-being. Especially if you spend several hours sitting during the day, your back has to work hard. Not infrequently, back problems then become widespread. To avoid this, invest in an ergonomically shaped office chair. Such has certain characteristics:

• The backrest of the upper body adapts to its movement and thus supports it in every posture.
• A lumbar support relieves the lumbar area.
• The height of the chair is adjustable to suit your individual height. When seated, the lower and upper legs should form a 90 ° angle.
• The armrests are adjustable in height, relieving the shoulders and thus prevent tension.
• The padding has an appropriate pressure distribution to relieve thighs and buttocks.