How much time do you spend in your home office each day? 1 hour, 3 hours, 6 hours or more? If you spend a lot of time in your home office then you should consider giving it a total re-design. Having a clean and inspiring environment is essential to being healthy and working to your fullest potential.

I will point out some tips, resourced and show you a bunch of cool home offices to get you started on your office re-design. When you are done with your new office you will never want to leave!
How to get Started

1. Research

Check out other peoples office’s, research colors at the paint store and browse office furniture stores and websites so you can get a solid idea of what you want your office to look like.

2. Take measurements and Start Planning

The last thing you want to do is find a cool piece of furniture and then find out it doesn’t fit. So measure your room to see what kind of space you are working with.

3. Prep Work and Painting

Chances are you will need to do some prep work and this could include tasks such as filling holes, removing wallpaper, adding a primer coat of paint to the walls and so on. Once your room is prepped head over to your local paint store to get your paint, rollers, masking tape, brushes, pans and so on so you can paint!

4. Find Your Main Furniture Pieces

Now that your room is painted and ready to go you will need to fill it in with some of the important furniture pieces such as a desk, chair, cabinets and maybe a bookshelf. Feel free to add whatever pieces you want, but cover the basics first and try not to crowd your office.

5. Test Different Layouts

Try moving your furniture pieces around a lot to see what layout will be the most comfortable for you.

6. Accessories

Now its time to accessorize and give your new dream office that final touch. There are lots of great accessories out there such as plants, vases, candles or maybe you already have some cool items to display, but don’t forget less is more!

7. Do Some “Spring Cleaning”

The key to a great office to to keep clutter to a minimum. We all have tons of stuff, but do you really need that garden gnome with a missing arm on your bookshelf? ( Weird example, I know) A lot of people have what I like to call “Pack Rat Syndrome” and this is when they just cant get themselves to throw anything out. A nice solution to this is to have a garage sale, or donate some items to your local Good Will.

8. Organize Your Paperwork and Computer Files

The paperwork can pile up fast now a days and the same goes with computers files, so make sure you take some time to get organized and don’t just make this a one time event.

9. Develop Better Habits

Now that you have a great new office that is clean and organized you will want to keep it that way. You will need to get in the habit of cleaning your office on a regular basis. You will feel much better if everything is clean, organized and well designed!

10. Don’t Forget to Leave

Your new dream office is probably pretty awesome now and you may be working harder and better then ever, but you still need some fresh air. So get out and have some fun!

1. Try not to eat in your office, you don’t want crumbs in your keyboard!

2. Find some cable organizers to de-clutter your computer area and look into wireless electronics.

3. Open your window once in a while for some fresh air and natural sun light.

4. Get Sirius Satellite Radio or create a big iTunes Playlist so you can listen to your favorite music while working.

5. Get a paper shredder to dispose of important paper work.

6. Buy a white board to write down important tasks or get a notepad.

7. Get some sticky notes and use them as important reminders.

8. Dedicate a spot in your office for your wallet, keys, phone and other important items so you always know where they are.
Tips for Working With a Tight Budget

Don’t worry there are still plenty of ways to create a great office without buying new furniture or electronics.

1. Hit up garage sales, you will be amazed at what you can find. Don’ be afraid to take old furniture and refinish it so it will look brand new.

2. Find some flea markets; similar to garage sales flea markets can be a good place to find great items at low prices.

3. Check classifieds online such as Craiglist. People usually sell stuff for cheap and there is even a free items section where people are just giving stuff away.

4. Watch some shows on HGTV like Design on a Dime for tips on making the most of your design budget.

5. Have your own garage sale to raise money towards your office re-design.

6. Sell your old computers and electronics so you can put money towards your new gear.

7. Save all your change each day in a container and then cash it in after a few months.

8. Bring those soda cans and bottles to the recycling center you would be surprised how much you can make!

What makes for an appealing workspace? The envelopes they leave in your mailbox every two weeks. But after that, it comes down to design and amenities. Also, we like windows and brick. Lots and lots of brick. After spending some time on Office Snapshots, we present the ten best-looking offices in tech, below.

As our days become more and more busy, living a organized life is essential. Being organized helps individuals succeed at home and in their life, avoid stress and handle careers. Being organized is not being neat. Organizing is about function, not appearance. It’s not about a paper free desk, it’s about being able to find what your looking for easily. Being organized also reduces stress and frustration of buying the same thing more then once. Also bills that are organized are less likely to have late fees. The average person pays $35 a month for some sort of late fees. You will also be less likely to have food go bad and eat at home when organized. Anyway you add it up being organized can improve your life in multiple ways. When well organized you can spend more time with family, friends, activities, hobbies, exercise, vacations, and work. This will help with a better balanced between work and home. and happier healthier life.  Take small steps daily to get things in order without overwhelming yourself. Start with one room and think of function first then settle the room around what you want it do.

I’ve been working from home for three years. I started in 2005, when I left a cube-farm commuter job and joined a small company based about an hour’s drive from my house. The plan was to commute in as needed, perhaps once a week, but work from home most of the time.

I had no idea, absolutely no friggin’ clue, how much it was gonna suck. My typical day went like this:

* get up
* check company IRC, say good morning, make sure nothing’s on fire yet
* lunch, maybe some scrabble or a TV show
* meeting about something. with phone muted, can watch youtube videos
* work some more, but with more interruptions
* dinner, hopefully in proximity to another human
* hack on the side project du jour
* go to sleep

This post is half of a pair of posts on working from home. I’m giving you the bad news first. Here’s the most important thing you should know:

It’s not just a matter of feeling lonely: all kinds of emotions depend on regular, face-to-face human interaction, and you run a serious risk of becoming unproductive, uninspired, and even depressed without it.

Let me reiterate: feeling lonely at work isn’t the only–or even the primary–way that working from home screws you. Well before your soul starts to scream with loneliness — which might never happen if you have family or friends you see regularly — you will suffer from being alone.

The first thing to go is probably motivation. For this you can blame a massive cut in feedback. In an office you get feedback constantly. At the coffee pot in the morning, eye contact shows interest in your latest tasks, or nods express sympathy about difficult colleagues and bosses. When you have a question about something, your coworker’s eyes and facial expressions will tell you, consciously or subconsciously, if you’re sounding smart or stupid. Chances are, you depend on this feedback more than you realize. You need it both for work-specific communication, which is easy to see, and for maintaining your self-image, esteem, and motivation–which is harder to see because the mechanisms are subconscious.

You don’t get rich feedback when communicating over a phone, email, or text chat. No facial expressions; no idea whether a persons eyes are wandering or locked on; maybe some hint of tone of voice. All this feedback is distilled and distilled away when you’re not there to pick it up in person, and this will affect you quickly and constantly if you work remotely.

You might say, ah, the hell with it, I’ll learn to live without that feedback. After all, doesn’t Paul Graham say that people with “unlimited self-generated morale” are almost guaranteed to succeed? Don’t you want to be like that?

Chances are, you could be more determined. But there are very few people — perhaps mostly sociopaths and the autistic — who can pursue a goal indefinitely without feedback. Be aware of the feedback you need, and work on making it possible. And remember that when you’re considering working from home, you’re going to tear away a lot of that feedback.

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Farmer

America has only two million farmers, and their average age is 55. Since sustainable agriculture requires small-scale, local, organic methods rather than petroleum-based machines and fertilizers, there is a huge need for more farmers — up to tens of millions of them, according to food guru Michael Pollan. Modern farmers are small businesspeople who must be as skilled in heirloom genetics as marketing.

Schools: University of Vermont: Center for Sustainable Agriculture; Stone Barns Center For Food & Agriculture in New York State; University of Oklahoma: Kerr Center for Sustainable Agriculture; Evergreen State College: degree in Sustainable Agriculture.

Related careers: urban gardener; farmers market and CSA coordinator; artisanal cheesemakers; and other food producers.

Forester

Modern forestry is a complex combination of international project finance, conservation and development. According to the World Bank, a staggering 1.6 billion people depend on the forest for their livelihoods. Foresters help local people transition from slash-and-burn to silviculture–teaching cultivation of higher-value, faster-growing species for fruit, medicine or timber, for example while carefully documenting the impact on the environment. Deforestation, which causes around a quarter of all global warming, is also likely to be a leading source of carbon credits worth tens of billions of dollars.

Schools: Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies; Duke University: Nicholas School of the Environment; University of Michigan: School of Natural Resources & Environment.

Companies/organizations: The Nature Conservancy; New Forests Inc.

Solar Power Installer

Making and installing solar power systems already accounts for some 770,000 jobs globally. Installing solar-thermal water heaters and rooftop photovoltaic cells is a relatively high-paying job–$15 to $35 an hour–for those with construction skills. And opportunities are available all over the United States, wherever the sun shines. Currently over 3,400 companies in the solar energy sector employ 25,000 to 35,000 workers. The Solar Energy Industries Association predicts an increase to over 110,000 jobs by 2016 — even more if anticipated tax credits are accelerated.

Companies: Akeena Solar; Sungevity; Sunpower; Full list at SEIA.org.

Energy Efficiency Builder Buildings account for up to 48 percent of US energy use and greenhouse gas emissions. LEED, the major green building certification, has over 43,000 accredited professionals. But the cutting edge in efficient buildings goes far beyond LEED. Buildings constructed according to Passivhaus and MINERGIE-P standards in Germany and Switzerland, respectively, use between 75% and 95% less heat energy than a similar building constructed to the latest codes in the US. Greening the US building stock will take not only skilled architects and engineers, but a workforce of retrofitters who can use spray foam insulation and storm windows to massively improve the R-value (thermal resistance) of the draftiest old houses. A study by the Apollo Alliance recommended an $89.9 billion investment in financing to create 827,260 jobs in green buildings — an initiative supported by the Obama stimulus package, which specifically mentions energy retrofits.

Schools: Arizona State University School of Architecture: Energy Performance Climate-Responsive Architecture; University of Michigan: Alfred A. Taubman College of Architecture + Urban Planning; The Earth Institute at Columbia University.

Wind Turbine Fabricator

Wind is the leading and fastest-growing source of alternative energy with over 300,000 jobs worldwide. Turbines are 90% metal by weight, creating an opportunity for autoworkers and other manufacturers to repurpose their skills. According to the American Wind Energy Association, the industry currently employs some 50,000 Americans and added 10,000 new jobs in 2007. Their job board is an excellent place to start looking for opportunities.

Conservation Biologist The granddaddy of diversity, E.O. Wilson, famously called conservation biology — a discipline with a deadline. The urgent quest to preserve the integrity of ecosystems around the world — and to quantify the value of — ecosystems services — leads to opportunities in teaching, research and fieldwork for government, nonprofits, and private companies. The forthcoming economic stimulus package from the Obama administration offers the prospect of increased federal support for science and research.

Schools: Center for Conservation Biology at the University of Washington and the Center for Conservation Biology at Stanford University. At the small College of the Atlantic every student gets his or her degree in human ecology; it’s been called the most sustainable college or university in the world.

Green MBA and Entrepreneur

The concept of the triple bottom line has migrated from the margins to the mainstream of the business world. A recent report by the U.S. Conference of Mayors, Mayors Climate Protection Center found that business services like legal, research and consulting account for the majority of all green jobs — over 400,000. This includes everything from marketing to the LOHAS (Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability) segment, to serving as a VP of sustainability within a large company, to piloting a green startup like Method or Recyclebank.

Schools: Stanford School of Business; San Francisco’s Presidio School of Management; Leeds School of Business; University of Colorado at Boulder — Deming Center for Entrepreneurship; the Bainbridge Graduate Institute in Wash.

Recycler The total number of recycling jobs in the United States is at more than 1 million, according to recent reports (PDF, right click to save). Although the market for paper and plastic has slowed down recently due to the economic downturn, demand for steel is still strong — 42 percent of output came from scrap in 2006 — and recycling remains the economical alternative to high disposal fees. Worldwide more than 200,000 people work in secondary steel production, and the US is a major center of production. New laws and regulations are also creating a need for specialized companies that can close the loop by recycling and repurposing e-waste, clothing, plastic bags, construction waste, and other materials.

Companies: Rumpke; Greenstar North America.

Sustainability Systems Developer The green economy needs a cadre of specialized software developers and engineers who design, build, and maintain the networks of sensors and stochastic modeling that underpin wind farms, smart energy grids, congestion pricing and other systems substituting intelligence for natural resources. Coders with experience using large scale enterprise resource planning have an edge here, as well as developers familiar with open source and web 2.0 applications.

Companies: IBM, V2Green, WindLogics

Urban Planner Urban and regional planning is a linchpin of the quest to lower America’s carbon footprint. Strengthening mass transit systems, limiting sprawl, encouraging use of bicycles and deemphasizing cars is only part of the job. Equally important is contingency planning, as floods, heat waves and garbage creep become increasingly common problems for metropolises. Employment in this sector is projected to grow 15 percent by 2016, and the jobs are mainly in local governments, which make them a slightly safer bet for the downturn.

Schools: Penn Institute for Urban Research; Harvard: Department of Urban Planning and Design; Portland State University: Nohad A Toulan School of Urban Studies and Planning.

Wow what a win win, nice clean looking can and much better for the world.

It doesn’t only look beautiful, and it would make Jon Ive and Steve Jobs wet, but this naked Coca-Cola can would help save energy while reducing air and water pollution. Would it really make a difference? Let’s do some math:

I assume the consumption only increases through time, but let’s take the daily 2007 numbers from Global INForM Cases Sales database: The total number of Coca-Cola cans sold per worldwide is 67,873,309. Diet Coke and Coke Zero sold 35,387,241, while My Coke sold 103,260,550. Yes, that’s all per day.

So using only classic Coca-Cola’s daily sales figures, that means 24,773,757,785 are sold every year. Twenty-four billion cans. That is indeed a lot of paint and paint removal products. Because this doesn’t only affect the production. It also affects the recycling process, eliminating one step:

The naked can help to reduce air and water pollution occurred in its coloring process. It also reduces energy and effort to separate toxic color paint from aluminum in recycling process. Huge amount of energy and paint required to manufacture colored cans will be saved. Instead of toxic paint, manufacturers process aluminum with a pressing machine that indicates brand identity on surface.

Sounds good to me, and it even looks better if you take into account all kinds of Coke. That brings up the number to 75,380,201,500 cans. I don’t know how much paint that represents, but I’m guessing quite a few thousand tons.