Since arriving in our apartment in San Francisco we’ve had to figure out ways to make the best possible use of our space in order to have everything that we need in a 1 bedroom apartment… one of the necessities is some sort of home office. Since we didn’t want the office to also share space in the bedroom we decided to put it in the hallway closet. Yes, that’s right the hallway closet… and no its not a walk-in closet.

The office comes equipped with a desk, a whiteboard, pictures on the wall, a paper shredder, a printer, 2 file cabinets and 4 filing boxes, a desk lamp, an external hard drive and space for writing, filing and a laptop. Sounds hard to believe but it can be done! Here are a few pics:

(click images for full size)

The crazy thing is that this actually works… and it works well! It doesn’t feel crammed, it doesn’t feel too tight and I’m able to fit pretty much everything I need in there to work. This is how we did it… we went to IKEA!

At IKEA we purchased two filing cabinets on caster wheels that can be moved around and measured them to make sure they’d fit in perfectly with enough space for legs! Then at IKEA we made our way to the custom counter top section and purchased a counter top that was the proper size. They’re even willing to cut it to size if you need to! Got a cheap desk lamp for light, a powerstrip and one of the IKEA “white boards” and made our way home. I put it all together in about an hour for a grand total cost of less than $250 bucks.

The only “issue” is that there is no power outlet in the closet. This is where the powerstrip comes into play. I leave everything plugged into the powerstrip and the powerstrip is always connected to an extension cord that gets plugged in across the hall when I need to use the office. It’s as simple as opening the doors and connecting the extension cord… unplugging the extension cord and closing the doors. It fits, and it works!

So, if you need a space saving technique for a home office… give this a shot! It really does work!