It can be hard to stay organized when your office isn't an office. Creating a double-duty live/work space brings up unique challenges, like "Where do I put my pencils if every drawer is full of silverware?" and "How the heck am I going to fit a filing cabinet in the pantry?" Luckily, Martha Stewart's team comes to the rescue with a few inventive solutions to making a workspace work in the kitchen.
From the archives of Martha Stewart Living, this home office seems to make the best of a bad situation:
If a sit-down dinner isn't an everyday occurrence, then your dining room can easily double as a discreet office. Any table large enough for a family meal makes a spacious desk, and all other work essentials can be slyly stowed among the china and flatware.
And slyly stowed they are. Borrowing a bit of space from the kitchen, this office manages to cram an entire home office into two drawers, a window seat and the few closed shelves below a china hutch.
The hutch hides a printer and laptop dock, made easily accessible with a retro-fitted pull-out shelf. Pens, pencils and scissors find an out-of-the-way home in silverware caddies painted to match the hutch, and spare reams of paper are disguised inside labeled boxes.
The filing cabinet is replaced by a storage-ready window seat fitted with freestanding hanging-file-folder racks.
The rest of the office kicknacks are stashed inside two drawers borrowed from the kitchen storage. Everthing fits neatly thanks to silverware drawer organizers (which work great for organizing in any office), but there's also plenty of other to make kitchen tools useful for organizing office supplies. Check out our post on 10 Ways to Use Kitchen Storage in the Office.
What do you think? Could you make a kitchn office work with these tips? Do you have another secret for creating extra storage in a multi-pupose space?
Read More: Martha Stewart
MORE ON KITCHEN HOME OFFICES FROM APARTMENT THERAPY:
• Eat and Compute: Kitchen Office Dining at its Finest
• 10 Ways to Use Kitchen Storage in the Office
• Kitchen Command Centers
• Desks in the Kitchen
(Images: Eat and Compute: Kitchen Office Dining at its Finest, Martha Stewart)
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Comments (7)
Don't have a window seat for file storage? I made one from a trunk. (Flat topped trunk form unfinished furniture company, we paid them to finish it for us.) (Actually two -- one is for my files, one has a pet flap and houses litter boxes.)
I made cushions by cutting some foam and stapling fabric over to the underside of the lids. Not as professional or fancy as cushions with piping etc. BUT you can open the lids without the cushions flopping around or falling off, which is critical since I get into both of them nearly every day.
Mine sit under windows in my home library and are flanked by bookshelves. Accomplishing this in a kitchen or dining room might be harder, but the concept does work if you have the space, and you don't need built-ins.
Where are the kitchen cabinets from?
JCHICKPEA - since it looks like a Swedish kitchen (judging from stove, sink and fridge), I'd say a good guess would be the Big I... (aka Ikea)
While the style is similar, I don't believe this is IKEA (though you can definitely get the look with the ADEL white doors... the ADEL doors have wider stiles/rails compared to the ones above). I will recommend IKEA for all your kitchen cabinetry needs, though! Gotta love soft-close everything!
Hanging file racks in a window seat... gotta love Martha
I couldn't do this as I would eat all day.
I've been working on a window seat with filing storage for our double desk! I did start mine before this came out but it is a fantastic idea! :) Here's where we are so far: http://29ruehouse.blogspot.com/2012/03/ahhhhhh-in-my-best-choir-voice.html