Hot take: I was wrong about needing a separate office in my apartment

For two years, I paid an extra $200 a month for a two-bedroom in Tempe just to have a dedicated office. I saw a video tour from a freelancer in Chicago who works from a corner of her living room with a room divider and good headphones. She said the key was setting a hard stop time, not the room itself. I tried her method in my new one-bedroom, and my focus is actually better because I'm not just sitting in that other room all day. Has anyone else found that a specific routine beats having more square footage?

4 comments

4 Comments

thomasb413mo ago

My buddy did the same thing with a folding screen in his studio.

angela7283mo ago

My cousin in Austin tried that last year with a shoji screen. It looked amazing for about a week until his cat decided it was the best climbing wall ever. The whole thing came down in the middle of the night. Sometimes the simplest fixes just don't stand up to real life.

ray6131mo ago

Dog stories always get blown out of proportion. A folding screen is just a screen, it's not like the dog tore down a load-bearing wall. Hang it up with some Command strips if it's that big of a deal, or just shove it in a corner. We're acting like this is some kind of tragedy when it's basically just a warped piece of cardboard on hinges.

wyattramirez3mo ago

I bought a fancy room divider for my studio in Phoenix. My dog treated it like a personal door he was morally against, so now it's just a very expensive laundry rack.