Your home based business needs a dedicated area in your home to work from.
It's essential to your overall success to have a properly designated space to work from in order to maintain your work ability and efficiency.
Simply "making do" won't help your business be a success in the long run.
Choosing the best area in your home to locate your home office in is a key task for anyone who ever wants to work from home.
Now you'll need to look at what part of your home you'd like to convert to a home office.
Which room in your home will readily convert to a home office with the least amount of fuss and expense? No matter what room you choose make sure that you're not going to be mixing work with family issues - you can't focus on what you're doing with kids running wild around you.
Once you've selected the actual location itself then you'll need to look at how you're going to layout the office itself.
Where will you put your desk and how big is the desk going to be? Are you going to be using a filing cabinet and if so where are you going to put it? Why not spend some time sketching our rough plans for how you'd like the office to look when you're finished? One of the key pieces of furniture in any home office is the desk .
This isn't something you can just kinda leave to chance and hope it works out.
It needs to be the proper height (or height adjustable if you can afford it) and have more than enough room for all your office equipment and supplies; especially your office phone - it should be placed in an uncluttered part of the office.
Having ample free work space on your desk is important from the point of view of setting up your computer.
When positioning your computer on your desk you'll want to have it set on one side of the desk to make it easy to access and to maximize your working environment.
The last thing you need is to be straining across your desk to reach anything.
Another key part of your home office is your chair.
Your behind is going to spend several hours each day stuck in this chair so make sure you invest in something that won't cause you pain and is comfortable to sit in for prolonged periods of time.
It's so important that whatever chair you choose meets your height and body style to promote proper sitting posture and allow you to sit comfortably.
And last but not least you need to look at the lighting in your home office.
Good lighting is as important an aspect of creating your home office as anything else.
Use natural light as much as possible - it saves on energy bills and is also good for your mental state whilst working.
For those dark evenings or early mornings just make sure you have adequate lighting in the form of a table or floor lamp that properly illuminates your entire desk - eyestrain can become damaging very quickly.
The actual cost involved in setting up your own home office is not as high as you may think.
Just focus on getting the basics right - a good desk, a good chair, proper lighting and a decent computer system.
The rest will come in time or when you can afford it.