What I was up to over the holidays…

Caroline lets us in in what she was up to over the holidays….

Last year, I got married at Christmas in a secret wedding, so before this year’s Christmas holidays we had quite a few jokes about what I was planning on doing.  Since we recently bought a new house, my number 1 priority was getting my office organised.

As a virtual assistant, I am quite unusual in that I have a separate rented office to work from rather than working from home.   Whilst it certainly has its professional advantages in terms of people’s perception about my business, it also has a personal benefit, giving me a good degree of separation from work and space to relax.

Surprisingly though, I’ve always had workspace at home too – a home office for late night/weekend working, or where I chill out reading the latest business books and devising my latest marketing strategies.  I think more creatively at home.

Before: the large cupboard

The new house is really big but didn’t have space for me to have a separate office, but I found a solution – a very large cupboard!

My requirements were relatively simple, but I knew that by nature I am messy and very susceptible to procrastination if the conditions aren’t right.  So I needed:

• a storage place for all my business books and stationery supplies;
• good lighting and the ability to sit for a few hours comfortably;
• lots of plugs; and
• somewhere I can shut the door on and escape from if it got messy.

The cupboard was full of junk and had no power sources for either lights or plugs.  I cleared it out and I followed that up by recruiting Tam the Handy Man to create my office fantasy.  I explained I wanted it to be really bright with tons of storage. As you’ll see from the video, the cupboard was DARK!

Tam installed electrics, shelves and trunking for all the cables.  Once he’d finished he asked me whether I’d really intended for Blackpool Illuminations to be in my cupboard… Cheeky bugger!  In this photo you can see the full effect of the lovely orange 70s swirly carpet – bet you haven’t seen one of them for a while!

Then we painted it an electrifying lime green colour.  Everyone else (including Tam, my hubby, my mum and anyone else who has seen it) says it is a revolting colour but I find it really fresh and bright – and that’s the most important thing!

Here are the results:

From outside

Inside the cupboard/office

So what else to add?  I’m going to put in some pinboards/whiteboards and a couple of pictures, but apart from that I’m really pleased with the result overall.  Mostly it’s being used to file the household bills at the moment, but I’ve also used it for a few afternoons when we’ve had builders in the rest of the house and I need to work from home.  It’s great to have that flexibility!