Building a Creative Workspace

I’ve lived in my Berkeley apartment for two years now, and it’s gone through many phases. When I first moved into the two bedroom space, it was with two roommates. Needless to say, in our 568 sq ft space, things got crowded. Our beds took up the entire room (I shared a room that first year) and desks took up half the living room. That first year was really great, but when three became two, we had a little more room to spread out and make our space work for us. Once I moved my desk into my room, I quickly set out to give everything a home and make a workspace as organized and colorful as I tend to like it.

After actually working in the space, it quickly revealed its shortcomings. I didn’t get enough light where I had placed my desk, and had to stash all of my art and craft supplies in boxes and bins where I’d inevitably forget about them. This March, I decided to make a change, and do what I could to open my room up. I’ll eventually post a room tour here (It’s come a long way) but until then, I wanted to talk about how building a creative workspace has made me a happier and more productive person. Some changes I made were moving my desk by the window, and stacking all my books on the floor beside it. The biggest change, though, came in the form of a pegboard.

My biggest problem with my workspace—since I’d stopped being a student and primarily used it for more for creative endeavors— was that I had nowhere to put my supplies, and the effort of unboxing and repacking everything often overpowered my desire to make anything. So I started keeping an eye out for workspace solutions, and discovered pegboards. Vertical storage! It was genius, but I had to find a way to make it work in my rental apartment. After talking through it with my man (who graciously helped me build it) we decided to build a frame into the back of the pegboard (the material is pretty thin and floppy without support) and build a lean-to. I bought a sheet of white pegboard material at home depot, had them cut it to size, and built in the support.

After it was built, I bought the metal, wire, and acrylic pegboard accessories from Amazon, and set it all up on a monday evening. I’ve been using it for nearly three months now, and it’s holding up like a dream. I’ll eventually install brackets into the wall to make it earthquake-safe, but as it is my attitude about working has changed dramatically.

xo,

T