I’ve been promising to share pictures of my new office for what seems like forever now, so I am pretty excited to finally be able to say my little space is finally finished! This is where the magic happens, folks! 😉
All joking aside, I can’t even begin tell you how great it feels to finally have a space of my own to work in. Our three bedroom house didn’t have any extra space for a separate office, so my previous workspace was smack dab in the middle of our living room. This worked for awhile, but after my husband left his job last April to be the stay-at-home dad, we discovered that a little space is necessary sometimes.
After a few months of frustration, Chuck gently suggested it might be time to find some sort of office space, and in August I found an affordable little space for rent in a downtown building about a mile from our house.
I was excited at the prospect of making a space totally my own, but also overwhelmed by the cost of purchasing a whole room full of furniture. The first thing I did was create an inspiration board of ideas for how I wanted my space to look:
I didn’t have time to search endlessly on Craigslist, so I did the next best thing: I took a little trip to IKEA! Because the space was fairly small (and since the closest IKEA is almost 2 hours away) I first made a floor plan to scale (okay, Chuck made me a little floor plan to scale–sometimes it is nice being married to an engineer), then made templates for the furniture I was thinking of getting. (The measurements are listed online) Once I was sure it would all fit, I made a list and headed to IKEA. It was pretty daunting to manage 2 flatbed carts full of furniture all by myself, but with a little help from a few very nice employees, I managed to get everything I needed loaded into my trusty Tahoe. All in all, I think spent about $750 at IKEA on 2 desks, a printer cart, a supply cart, a bookcase, 3 bookshelves, a desk chair, curtain rods, a file cabinet, a wall clock, and some picture frames.
Of course the main reason all that furniture is so affordable is that you have to assemble it yourself! Yikes! It was quite the project and another reason I am grateful to have such a handy husband! My assistant Kalyn’s awesome husband pitched in to help with the assembly as well, which made it go a lot faster!
With the furniture in place I was ready to accessorize, and truthfully that is the part that took me awhile. I fell in love with this Robert Allen Kiki Piñata fabric after seeing it on Pinterest and knew I wanted it for my curtains. I whipped up one set in no time flat, but the second set took me almost 5 months to finish! The gorgeous rug I got from Overstock.com was one of the most expensive parts of the whole project at just over $200 (no longer available in the 5×8 size), but it covers up most of the ugly brown carpet and makes the room such a bright and happy space that it was worth the splurge.
Other DIY projects for the space included sewing a cozy chevron minty throw, (which has gotten a lot of use on cold mornings), and making a fabric covered tray to accent the ottoman. I also painted the fronts of my file cabinet with chalkboard paint, which turned out really cute! For the bulletin board, I simply used spray adhesive to attach fabric to an old cork board, then covered the whole thing in Mod Podge and painted the frame.
My girls each colored me a picture for my new office using oil pastels and I loved them so much I ended up framing them in my IKEA frame. I also found a space to hang my chevron chalkboard wall art!
To jazz up the second desk space I created some cute motivational printables, then clipped them to inexpensive clipboards for some very cheap and easy wall art.
The lamp and desk calendar were both found on clearance at Target, the orange and green boxes were purchased (on sale) at the Container Store, and the other accessories & furniture were gathered from around my house. Overall, I spent about $1200 on furniture, fabric, and office supplies.
* * *What are your best budget decorating tips?
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I love your work space. It is colorful! Now iam inspired to do something with mine.
Your space looks amazing!!! Congrats on getting it all done, and for so little too!! Love all the colors and mix of patterns. You are truly inspirational! You give a great deal of hope to those of us just starting out blogging for profit… Keep up the great work and motivation!!!
Thanks Suzanne. Blogging for profit can definitely be a lot of hard work for not a lot of payout in the beginning, but stick with it! Your first “real” paycheck will make it worth all the effort! 🙂
Looks nice and great, very pretty. But man that’s ALOT of money to spend when neither of you are really working. I mean I know you blog and all but I can’t see it’s THAT much for you to live on with a family and now renting space. goodness.. Mor epower to you.
That was a really rude and presumuptious comment!
No I’m being honest. Ruth has said before she appreciated honest comments. It is her life to live how she pleases and as I said MORE POWER TO HER. Not everyone is able to do what she does. So great for her!
Explain it to yourself however you want……. Your comment was still rude!
Not really rude. A lot of people couldn’t begin to go shop at Ikea for anything new. I’ve used second-hand file drawers and slabs of MDF to make a desk. I’ve seen up-cycled old doors across various bins and shelves and file drawers, to make a desk. Shelves from yard sales, bricks-and-boards…
I, too, would have liked to have seen what our blogger could have done on a true shoestring.
So why not just say that you’d like to see what could be done on little to no money? Rather than wow, that’s alot to spend when you “aren’t working”….. which if she’s renting an office, than I’d say it’s safe to say her blog is a full time job and I think it’s a little assumptious and rude to say other wise – like telling anyoe else that works full time, wow do you “really” have the money for that?
It is amazing what some bloggers make. Check oh http://www.pinchofyum.com They post their blog income. Anyway I agree with your comment though.
Thanks Girls. I wasn’t trying to be rude, I’m jsut a very honest blunt person, I say it how it is. sometimes it comes across wrong. I’ve tried the blogging thing, and I just never seen the income like this. So I would guess alot of income comes from other resources as well. Great for Ruth. Hope she keeps it up!
The incorrect part of your comment Jen is when you say “Neither of you are really working.” After taking a look around the blog it looks like Ruth’s husband is very active in their home and just as you would never classify a “stay at home mom” as not really working you should probably avoid the same sentiment for a stay at home dad.
More importantly you utterly degraded the career path that Ruth has chosen and have made big assumptions about how much Ruth earns for her hard work. It is VERY obvious by the professional quality of this website that Ruth spend HOURS (I would guess more than 40 per week but I don’t know for sure) per week on this site creating content (not limited to just her posts) for viewers like us. It is also evident in this post that she has an assistant. I would guess that that assistant is paid which means that Ruth has turned this blog into a good enough business to hire an employee. If you run a business with an employee it can be very difficult to work out of ones home and would make a lot of sense to move the business to a separate location.
There is a line between honesty and uninformed speculation. I believe you crossed it.
Just my thoughts. Keep up the good work Ruth.
Jen, for what it is worth I did not at all take offense to the question. Blogging is one of those very odd occupations that most people don’t really “get,” including many of my close friends and family. Before my husband made the move to become a SAHD, we took a long hard look at our finances to see if we would be able to afford it, and we ultimately decided that a better quality of life was more important than his income. We live pretty frugally, stick to a cash budget, and are 100% debt-free which does give us more leeway. That said, I do earn a full time income from this blog, and it has grown to a point far beyond what I can manage all on my own. (I talk more about my helpers & what they do on my about page here: https://www.livingwellspendingless.com/about/about-me/) We also weighed the pros and cons of having to pay for an outside office space, but again decided the benefits outweighed the costs, especially since in our deed restricted community I am not actually allowed to have outside employees come to work at my home.
If you are interested in learning more about earning an income from blogging, I have actually written a book called How to Blog For Profit (Without Selling Your Soul). It is available on Amazon here: http://bit.ly/BlogforProfitAmazon
Hope that helps clarify just a little. Again, I was not at all offended by your honest question. 🙂
Thanks Ruth. I appreciate that and I wasn’t trying to be rude. I just never honestly knew you could earn liket hat with a blog. that’s all I will check out your book, I find it fascinating you can do this full time. thankyou for your time, I hve followed you for a while now and while I don’t agree with everything I do like a lot and I know you appreciate honesty, if it’s not positive. I’m the same way.. Great job!
Hi Ruth, this dialogue has peaked my interest. I’m curious for a few things, 1) you said you are 100% debt free, which helps obviously. Is that including mortgage, car loans and student loans? 2) would you be willing to write a post on how you attained that? I’ve tried David Ramsey and while it worked for some, it didn’t work for me completely, it did help some and i didn’t agree with all his ways. 3) How do you handle the medical insurance option? I currently work full time because I need to carry medical and my husband does not make much money.
Thanks Ruth. I’ve followed you for almost 4 years now and have watched your blog grow, while Jen was very blunt, and I do agree I don’t agree with everything either, there’s quite a bit I do like! I’m going to check your book out and see if this blogging thing is something i can do part time, even if it’s just to earn a few extra bucks.. I’m just afraid you have to put alot into it ahead of time, which I don’t have…
Hi Deb, yes that is including our mortgage and everything else. We paid off the remainder of our mortgage last month but I haven’t written about it because my husband feels weird about making a big “debt free” announcement. We love Dave Ramsey and use his cash budget plan each month, and we also both drive 10+ year old vehicles that are both paid for. We actually shared a vehicle for a long time, but when my husbands sister died last October we inherited her car.
Blogging does take a LOT of time, and as I explain in my book I did it for several years without making much money at all, and almost everything I did make got reinvested into paying for blog design, hiring helpers, and attending conferences so that I could learn as much as possible. It has paid off, but it is definitely NOT easy money! 🙂 However, the book is only $4.99 so it is worth a read to see if it would be a good fit!
Great job with the room! Love the colors. I also live 2 hours from Ikea but it is worth the drive, they have some great products at great prices!
Wow… that looks fantastic!!! You just gave me a few great ideas!!!
Thanks Danelle! 🙂