9-to-5

As I alluded to in my last post, I've been at a new job these last few weeks, and acclimating to a full-time work schedule is taking some time. BUT, because I have a new office, I ALSO have a new space to decorate! Some of you may remember that I did a few posts on decorating your office back in the summer (here, here, and here), before I actually had an office of my own (beyond the little nook in my old apartment). Those posts were definitely fantasy... This one is reality, haha.

I'm working for a healthcare/education institution and as such, have a pretty standard office. Greyish carpet, white walls, wood-veneer corner desk with hutch, ergonomic wheely chair, florescent overhead lighting, no window. It's really all quite glamorous ;) Given that I've always maintained that an aesthetically-pleasing environment will make you work more productively, I obviously wanted to make the space my own. But this time, I had to be realistic. Terrible. No painting the walls, replacing all the dated office furniture, or you know, installing a window, haha. Here's the before:

Mismatched furniture, before I moved the second desk.

Blurry photos courtesy of my dang iPhone.

As you can see, the set-up was pretty bland and boring.

My first order of business was to deal with the terrible lighting. It was AWFUL. Seriously gave me a headache. I stole (with permission) a never-used floor lamp from the meeting room down the hall and ordered a task lamp for my desk. Instantly, the room felt SO much better. It's amazing what lighting can do.

Next step was to bring in a bunch of reference books to store in my hutch. Decorative AND useful!

Then, I rummaged around all the stuff I had in storage and came up with this:

I got the vintage print in NYC a few years ago for $4 - such a steal. I also ended up deciding to bring in an additional framed print from the same place after I took this picture (the Eiffel Tower poster you see in the after photos). I also brought in a Janet Hill print I picked up last spring and a cute vintage owl container I bought on Etsy a few years ago - it holds thumbtacks. A couple of framed photographs, a mug, stationery & pens, and hand cream round out the collection.

Here's what it looked like after everything was set up/hung up in my office:

I'm not sure why this one is so bright - the real lighting is closer to the lighting in the photo below.

Totally professional "retouched" white board ;)

Sorry for the blurriness - I didn't realize until I went to add this photo to the post.

This redo was affordable (I already owned everything I used) and super easy, and made such a huge difference in the feel of my office. It's a really nice place to work now and I think my productivity has definitely increased. It really doesn't take a lot of time or money to make a space your own. Is it my dream office? Of course not, haha. But it's definitely a lot more 'me' than the office I walked into a few weeks ago.