Best Results Organizing

When Virginia Woolf wrote about having A Room of One’s Own almost a century ago, she wasn’t being entirely literal. She was talking about the lack of opportunities for expression that women in her day had. “A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction,” Woolf wrote.

Of course, this was mainly a metaphor for all of the lack of access women of her era (and most eras) experienced: lack of money to access education, lack of career choices, lack of ability to guide one’s own future. “A room of one’s own” in terms of the metaphor is complex, but the concept has stood out in popular understanding both in the figurative sense as well as the literal one since the 1920s, when Woolf published the essays based on her lectures.

What does this have to do with organizing and productivity?

GIMME SOME SPACE (FOR MY STUFF)

We all — unrelated to gender or age or any of a variety of factors — need our own space to think, to create, to work, to strive toward greatness, and even to be our best selves. Nobody can be “on” 24/7/365. Having no private space amid the chaos, whether that’s in a home or office, eventually prevents us from achieving or even aspiring to achievements.

At the start of the pandemic, there was an enormous push to understand the needs of remote workers. Setting your laptop up at the kitchen table just wasn’t going to cut it. Everyone began to look at ideas for creating remote work spaces that were efficient, effective, productivity-supporting, comfortable, and private. 

For an intensive primer on how to create a home office with storage that supports all of your needs, I encourage you to visit the guest post I wrote in 2021 for the excellent storage supply company, meori.

From Dad’s Study to the Modern Home Office covered everything you might want to know about home office design and storage. The post looked at why home office storage usually fails, the questions you should ask yourself to design better home office storage, and key strategies for creating your ideal work and storage space.

Of course, to create a room (or space) of one’s own, you have to look beyond the tangible. For example, for a deep dive into the emotional aspects of working remotely in the ongoing COVID era, you might want to visit my post The Perfect Unfolding As We Work From Home.

From a more interactive behavioral perspective, the classic Paper Doll post R-E-S-P-E-C-T: The Organizing Secret for Working At Home looked at how to create a work environment that ensures that others give us respect, and that we respect ourselves and our own time, energy, and attention. 

PRIVACY, PLEASE

Privacy is essential. While we tend to think of privacy in an office setting as the ability to conduct our work without others overhearing our conversations, it’s important to also consider how much we needed to be protected from overstimulation caused by other people’s conversations (or pen-tapping, gum-chewing, or video game playing). We looked at this to some extent in Divide and Conquer: Improve Productivity With Privacy Screens.

Whether we are neurotypical or neurdivergent, we all need to find our own rhythms, and that can involve protecting ourselves from the visual and auditory stimulation that comes from being out in the world. Decades of work environments have taught me how I work best.

When I first worked in television, I had a small, windowless office with old-fashioned, oversized furniture. I had no visual disturbances, but even with the door closed, I could hear the hubbub of a “bullpen” situation right outside my door.

At my next TV station, my office was slightly larger, but near the back of the building, away from noise, and my one window looked out onto an A/C unit and the outer wall of a warehouse. Although I’m an extrovert, when I work I want as little outside stimuli as possible, and this was perfect; with my door closed, I could concentrate and focus entirely on my own thoughts.

My last TV station was in a converted auto sales showroom. The entire front wall of my ridiculously enormous office was made up of floor-to-(high)-ceiling windows looking out onto a parking lot and a busy highway. Others may have envied the space, but I had to keep the vertical blinds closed 90% of the time (both to keep out the blinding sunlight and the visual stimuli). 

In my own home-based set-up for more than two decades, my desk faces a blank wall so that nothing beyond my computer screens can distract me. This might be hell for others, but it’s ideal for ensuring my focus. 

Your mileage may vary.

FINDING YOUR IDEAL SPACE — REALITY AND FANTASY

You’ll find a lot of advice online for creating your own home office space with minimal effort. For example, you could:

• Remove the accordion doors from a bedroom closet and add a wide but shallow table as a desk.
• Add lighting fixtures and a desk in an alcove under the stairs to create a private Harry Potter-inspired workspace. 
• Add a curving curtain rail on the ceiling (like the kind that creates privacy in hospital emergency rooms) to designate a corner of a bedroom or other area of the house as an office and separate the workspace from the rest of the area with a curtain.
• Use IKEA Kallax bookshelves (filled with books) to create a room divider to give a sense of privacy. (Feel free to watch the video with the sound off; the AI robotic voice insists on spelling Kallax out each time. The future is weird.)

But again, the internet abounds with such options. I thought it might be fun to look at a variety of standalone office ideas that range from the inexpensive and realistic to the when-you-get-that-huge-advance-on-your-great-American-novel option.

Sanwa Home Privacy Tent

Do you remember Party of Five? The mid-1990s Fox Broadcasting show about five young siblings trying to survive after a family tragedy launched the careers of Neve Campbell, Matthew Fox, Jennifer Love Hewitt, and Lacey Chabert, among others. 

When I saw this first product, I was immediately reminded of how, in the earliest seasons, Chabert’s character Claudia created her own bedroom by putting up a tent in the middle of the living room. The Sanwa Home Privacy Tent (AKA the 200 Tent001) is designed for a similar purpose, carving out private space in the middle of pre-existing space.

It’s a basic nylon tent, not very large, but adequate for one person, a small desk for a laptop, and a lamp or other lighting source — to create a distraction-free workspace. Designed for indoor use, it’s suitable for studying or working. The super-portable tent weighs only 6 pounds, including the case, and measure 35″ x 43″ by 59″.

There’s a skylight/rooftop opening if you’d like more natural light, a side window, and a zippered entrance so you can be available for office hours (or for visits from your pets.) Admittedly, it’s not very pretty, but if you’re feeling overwhelmed by all of the sensory inputs in your home, apartment, or dorm, setting this up for some private workspace could be just the ticket for eliminating your stress.

The instructions apparently only come in Japanese, but as the video shows, assembly looks very intuitive — it pops open like a mesh laundry basket!

Sold for about $125 at various stores online, it’s currently sold out at the Japan Trend Shop where I first found it. (It is in stock if you want to purchase it directly from Sanwa in Japan for 7980 yen, or a bit over $61.)

Alternatively, if you search Amazon for “indoor tents,” you’ll mostly find children’s tents and playhouses for under $60, but I have to admit that I envy something breezy like this indoor playhouse. (It’s regularly about $110, but at multiple times over the last few weeks, I’ve seen it on sale for under $65.)

Steelcase’s Office Pod Tent

Looking for something a little less cramped, more designer-friendly, and envisioned for grownups? Steelcase, known for office and classroom furniture as well as filing cabinets, has a whole line of nifty solutions. 

The Office Pod Tent is a freestanding pod made with a flexible aluminum frame. The top is open to provide air flow and to let in natural light. It’s also open on one side, so it won’t induce claustrophobia (but also won’t be as private as if you could close a door). Still, it limits distractions and provides a space that’s a little snazzier than what you’d get in an office, cubicle, or your dining room.

Basically, you’re going to feel like you’re on an upscale, modern camping trip. The Office Pod Tent is 92″ high. The base has a 76″ diameter, and because the frame creates bowing at the sides, it’s 88″ at its widest point. You’re definitely going to have more space than with the Sanwa tent! The aluminum frames and poles are standard silver with platinum-colored plastic connectors to secure the fabric to the frame, keeping the shape intact.

The spec sheet notes that the Office Pod Tent can be fully assembled in under one hour with two people. (I’m going to ignore how much that sounds like the beginning of a word problem in fifth grade math class.)

The Office Pod tent is available in three color “families: Sheer (white), Ascent (green), and Era (orange-ish) and can be can be specified in one solid color or in two color family combinations:

• Sheer
• Ascent/Era
• Sheer/Era
• Ascent/Ascent
• Sheer/Ascent

Steelcase actually designed the Office Pod Tent to be used in traditional office situations, either for creating alternatives to cubicles or introducing cozy, private lounge settings in the office. But you can definitely see how you could use this in a space in your home, or to create space for onboarding new employees in a small starter office. 

Steelcase Work Tents is a collection of privacy solutions – inspired by tents, but designed for the workplace.

The Office Pod tent must be purchased from an authorized Steelcase dealer. While I was unable to locate a price for the Office Pod Tent, I did find reference to a price point of $570 for Steelcase’s Boundary Tent (which is actually a room divider and not a tent). The line also includes Steelcase’s Table Tent (which is less of a tent and more of a table divider or privacy shield).

Alternative Temporary Office Pods

While researching this topic, I found quite a few alternative alternatives. For example, there’s a UK option for rent or purchase of inflatable office pods of varying sizes reflecting trippy colors. While it’s not really a fit for your random home office, something like this would be very cool if you were trying to set up a private meeting space at a conference or if you were having an event at your small office location.

UK-based Optix Inflatable Structures’ carries Pop-Up Office Pods in 3′ x 3′, 3′ x 4′, 4′ x 5′, and 5′ x 6′ options, and they have a variety of sizes for temporary meeting rooms.

Phone Booth Options

Unfortunately, there don’t seem to be many mid-range options in the home/office pod category, so you’re either looking at tents or full-on structures. At the high-priced, “dream” end of things, most options are tiny “phone booth”-style rooms that are not for the claustrophobic or the faint-of-pocketbook.

The various PoppinPod options from Poppin starts pricey and goes off into the stratosphere. There’s the Poppin Om Sit and Poppin Om Stand (below), both available in black or white, starting at $7,999.

It comes with a built-in work surface and is ideal for when need to take confidential phone or Zoom calls. The rest of the line continues with the Kolo Collection (Kolo 1, Kolo 1+, Kolo 2, Kolo 4, and Kolo 6), all with sliding doors and providing work or conference space.

Prices range from $10,999 to $47,999, so you’re not going to put one of these in your living room unless you’ve had a lifelong dream of pretending you’re Max and Agent 99 in the Get Smart cone of silence.

Talk Box Booth has four models, with the FOLD version the most resembling the old-fashioned Superman-changing-into-his-cape-and-tights version. For $5,775 without assembly costs (or for an additional $550 for expert assembly), Talk Box Booth’s FOLD starts at 39.4” wide x 35.4” deep x 90.2” high for the basic model. It has a bi-fold door, steel construction with a white powder-coat finish, and an adjustable height desk, so you can choose to sit or stand.

There’s an automatic fan that turns on as soon as you enter the FOLD, and the air circulates every few minutes to maintain comfort. Two electrical outlets and two USB ports allow you to keep all of your devices charged as long as the FOLD is plugged into a standard 120V outlet.

(Other Talkbox Booth lines include SLIDE, a sliding-door one-person booth, as well as the DOUBLE (which can accommodate two people) and a STUDIO (which can hold one to four people).

Loop Phone Booths are a similar line, but definitely offer the snazziest solutions for soundproof teeny office space.

Loop Solo is colorful and charming, and while small and squished, somehow feels both retro and modern. Seating one person, the 550-pound Canadian-made pod is 80.5″ high x 47.5″ wide by 29.5″ long.

The exterior is hardwood, while the interior is made of durable laminate and the 10mm thick tempered glass comes with a frosted option. The back panel can be cork, felt, or glass. If you choose glass, you’re going to be trading off having a feeling of more space for accepting more visual sensory inputs, so you’d need to know which would bother you more.

The cozy upholstered seat has an ergonomic backrest, and there’s a concealed magnetic door closure to make sure your Zooms are secure. A work desk is included and you can get an optional tempered glass whiteboard for taking notes and crafting ideas.

The Loop Solo uses a standard power outlet (with optional network and USB ports), has LED lighting, a positive pressure two-fan ventilation system, and an occupancy sensor.

No assembly is required and the Loop Solo is shipped in one piece, designed to fit through tight doorways or narrow halls, and claims to be the only plug-and-play pod of its kind on the market.

Unfortunately, you have to call to request a price quote, but there appear to be a variety of options in terms of types of wood and interior colors, so if this is more than a dream, you could contact Loop for a serious inquiry. (Be sure to come back to the comments section and share pricing with us!)

(Other Loop options include a soft-sided Loop Flex, a four-person Cube, which resembles a cozy diner booth with double-glass doors, and pre-fab Access conference rooms.)

If this still isn’t enough to satisfy your tight-squeeze office dreams, be sure to check out Cheapism’s Over-the-Top Home Office Pods for Working From Home and Urban Office‘s lines of office pods and dens & huddles. My favorite is the Jenson Hut Office Den, which feels simultaneously Space Age and like a Mad Men-style throwback.

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Fantasy or reality, however we create our workspaces, we must give ourselves an environment that grants us space for our work items and privacy for our thoughts and communication.

Somewhere between a repurposed kid’s desk and the dining table, between a pillow fort and a pricey office set-up, there’s a work space that’s right for you. The key is knowing what elements are essential for your satisfaction and what experimental aspects you can accept or reject.

What’s non-negotiable in your own work space? Please share in the comments!