In the past, you may have already found it hard to strike a balance between your work life and your home life. But in the age of working from home or WFH, these lines may have been blurred even further.
For one, there aren’t a lot of physical boundaries separating your work zone from your leisure zone. As a result, you may have found yourself getting distracted from your work tasks because of your home TV or gaming console. It’s even worse if you’ve been letting anxieties about work bleed into your precious relaxation time. For another, when you juggle so many things in one living space, some areas—like your wardrobe—tend to get cluttered and even less pleasant to deal with.
One thing you should remember about your living spaces is that they are fundamentally connected to your work-life balance. All of them are meant to serve a purpose, whether that’s to nourish you or to prepare you for another productive day. As such, the key to achieving work-life balance in a place that’s so familiar to you is to be extra purposeful about its design.
Here are some insights about why it’s important to arrange your home spaces for maximum work-life balance, plus some practical tips on how to do so:
Poorly Designed Spaces Can Negatively Impact Your Well-Being
Several studies have shown that overworking ourselves and not assigning tasks to their rightful spaces can be detrimental to our physical, mental, and emotional health.
You may have already felt the brunt of the stress and the fatigue—and perhaps even gotten sick—because your home spaces weren’t conducive to work-life balance. The distance from your usual socialization opportunities may have also made you feel extra isolated from your family and friends, thus making it seem like your home space is a prison or a trap.
If your relationship with your work and your leisurely activities has incited these feelings, it’s definitely a sign that you should do something about the layout of your home.
Organized Spaces Can Improve Your Mood
Conversely, there’s proof that organizing your home spaces can lift your mood by giving you a sense of order and stability. Indeed, few things are a better start to one’s day than a fully organized wardrobe where staples like American made compression socks, underwear, basic tops, and accessories are all in their right place. Decluttering and organizing your home spaces can eliminate your anxiety about not being in control of your things, thus contributing to a healthier, happier, and more productive mood.
Organized Spaces Help You Compartmentalize Your Tasks
A lot of the problems you may be experiencing regarding your work-life balance may link back to issues of compartmentalization. Ideally, certain spaces in your home should serve a particular purpose and not deviate too greatly from them.
For example, your bedroom with great bed sizes should be for resting, your wardrobe should be for dressing up, your kitchen should be for eating, and your living room should be for relaxing. The moment these spaces are used for something else, like work, it will be harder for you to keep up a healthy schedule or decompress from work-related worries when you need to.
The best solution is to clean up and redesign your home spaces so that you very clearly remember what they’re for. You can start by moving work collaterals out of your living room and kitchen. Alternatively, you can begin by reorganizing your wardrobe so that it looks more like a closet and less like a storage space for work equipment.
Better Organization in Your Home Spaces Will Redirect Your Focus Towards the Important Things
Work-life balance is not just about preventing yourself from being too focused on work. You’ll know for sure that you’ve achieved this elusive balance when you have more energy to do the other things that matter in your life.
Knowing this, try to configure your home spaces so that it’s easy to cook and eat healthier meals, exercise and keep in shape, or enjoy a hobby of yours without any interruptions. Having the space to be fully in the moment when you do any of these things will restore your work-life balance and set the precedent for a more holistic life.
Some Quick Tips for Achieving Work-Life Balance in Your Home Spaces
To recap, here are a few practical things you can do to achieve better work-life balance in the spaces of your home:
- Remember what you’re meant to do when you’re inhabiting a particular space, and configure it accordingly.
- Declutter spaces like your wardrobe so that you can feel like you’re in control of your things.
- Determine a healthy schedule for yourself so that you have ample time to rest and relax as well as work. Ensure that your home spaces can help you follow this schedule.
Even if there are new challenges to obtaining work-life balance, it’s not impossible for you to do so for yourself. Start by making the necessary adjustments to your home and wardrobe, and see for yourself what difference it will make.
