In this post, I want to talk to you about my home office and the benefits it has brought me.
I built the office in my garage and it has made a huge difference to my productivity on both my 9-5 and my side gigs.
It’s the perfect space for me to get work done, and it makes me feel like I’m making the most out of my home without sacrificing any of the conveniences.
Now you may be thinking – well I don’t have a garage so what good is this post? Well, first of all, it’s not all about you, but second, you may have the option to build a garden office. A cheap garden shed and a weekend or two of DIY and you would be all set.
But anyway, back to the story:
What I built
At the back of my garage now stands a 9 foot by 5.5 foot office.
It is drywalled, carpeted, and painted. It has a glass door to allow light in and has two double electrical sockets.
I built it this size because I wanted to line up with the existing timber joists, and the width needed to be wide enough to fit my 49″ monitor.
It ended up being a good size as I was also able to fit my electric drumkit behind me without feeling cramped.
The only thing I would do differently if I tried again would be to add a window to allow more light in and maybe paint the walls a lighter colour (they are all painted black).
The benefits of working in a garage home office
There are a lot of advantages to working in your garage.
For starters, it’s out of the way and it won’t interfere with family life. It also means you can work at whatever time suits you, so if you need to be up early or late but don’t want to disturb anyone else, it is perfect.
Another benefit is that there are no distractions or interruptions: no noisy children, no loud TV, no phone conversations, etc. You can make the environment exactly how you like it.
Another bonus is being able to easily keep everything tidy and where I want it with nobody else’s things to worry about. If something needs tidying I can just put it away as I know exactly where it goes and, well, when you work in a small office, there isn’t much to put away in the first place.
One more benefit is that I can leave my workstation as I like it. I don’t need to consider that the desk might be used for dinner later on, or that it might be a hot desk and another office worker might need to use it. My keyboard is where I like it. My mouse is where I left it. My laptop is plugged into my monitor and ready to go. No need to mess around, just straight down to work.
One benefit of the office being in the garage, over being in a spare room, is that I physically leave the house to get to it (there is no internal door). This helps to create mental separation between home/relaxing and work/productivity.
When I leave to go to the office, I feel the need to say bye to family. This is silly as I’m literally 5 feet away from them, but it goes to show that there is a mental separation between the garage and the house.
Unexpected side effects of having a home office in the garage
I’ve also found some unexpected side effects since building the office:
Because of its small size, and because it is well insulated, the office is extremely easy to heat.
I don’t need a radiator or heating device of any sort. To heat the office all I do is turn on my PC and monitor, the heat from these and my body heat soon has the temperature rise to 22 degrees plus. If I get too hot then the door opens out into the nice cool garage.
The other great thing about the office is that behind me I have a small musical setup of my electric drums, bass and guitar.
I can play away on these without worrying about causing a racket to the rest of the house. Again, I can leave this all set up so if I need a five-minute break, I can turn around and I’m right into playing music.
The office is great for music, but if you’re not into playing music then it could be used for so many things. The benefit is that you can leave it set up and ready to go, without getting in other people’s way.
Conclusion
I hope this blog post has been helpful and shown you the benefits of building a home office away from the main house.
If you have the space and the means to build an office then I would definitely recommend it.
If you have any questions about building your own garage home office, feel free to reach out on Twitter.
Thanks for reading
Iain McClafferty – The Five Year Mortgage
