Using Pinterest for my office revamp inspiration

One of the things I want to organise early in 2013 is a tidy, organised office. I already have an office at home; it’s the tidy and organised bit that’s quite lacking. Part of this arises from the fact that when I set up my office it wasn’t an office, but just a study, a place to house my large collection of books and a desk for my computer so I could write and blog. Since then, it’s morphed into a proper home office and with that has come a need for something more than a relatively small desk and a wall of book shelves, because as much as I try to avoid it, along with a home office comes a collection of paperwork, books, business cards, training notes and resources and all kinds of other stuff that needs to have a good home.

I have a filing cabinet full of non-work related stuff in another room of the house; I didn’t feel like a just a boring old filing cabinet was what I needed to solve this problem. So I did what any other self-respecting social media junkie does when in need of inspiration: I turned to Pinterest.

If you haven’t discovered Pinterest yet, then I have one word of advice: don’t! Of all the different social media I think Pinterest is the one that is the most addictive and potentially time-wasting. But that’s because it’s SO MUCH FUN! So I won’t be at all offended if you ignore my advice.

Random Pinterest goodies

In a nutshell, Pinterest is a virtual pin-up board where you can “pin” websites, blog posts, images, whatever, into different pin-up boards (in other words, into different categories), and you can look at what other people have been “pinning” and “re-pin” their best bits to your own boards.

For my home office revamp project, I set up a pin-up board on my Amanda Kendle Consulting Pinterest profile called “Home Office Ideas”. I then had a very legitimate reason to do some fun searches on Pinterest looking for inspiration for how to redesign my office to be both practical and beautiful. Now, I must admit that the implementation of this is a long way away, but the dreaming and collecting of ideas on Pinterest has certainly made headway!

Home office inspiration on Pinterest

While I was searching, some of the Pinterest posts reminded me that my home office could be a place for my son to “work” – in the sense of “play quietly” from time to time, and perhaps more and more as he gets older; as I’m always teaching in my social media for parents courses, no child should have a computer in their bedroom so perhaps (looking ahead a few years) my office could also be his, and he could use a computer while I’m at work here (ask me in five years if this turned out to be a good idea or a stupid one). This idea led me down a whole lot of new pathways for gorgeous ideas to pin.

And so it goes on. Of course, I now need another spare couple of hours to have a proper look at all this and figure out the best way to re-do my office, but as far as getting lots of ideas from the comfort of my computer go – Pinterest can’t be beaten.