Balance, Design, Products
July 16, 2010
By Cerentha Harris
Where we’ve been this week…
1. Red Karl and Mary Ransleben own Red, a vintage and custom furniture store in Fredericksburg, Texas. Their blog is a wonderful chaotic collection of furniture, fabric and fashion. Where to Start: The wall sticker post.
2. Chez Larsson’s store We interviewed marketer and self-confessed neat freak Benita Larsson back in March about her home office. She’s shifted her store to Amazon where you can now buy the stuff you see in the homes she features on her blog. Where to Start: Head straight to Organizing Stuff. I love those acrylic magazine holders.
3. Coolboom I can’t believe I haven’t written about this online design ‘zine before. It’s an excellent source of interior design and architecture news. Where to Start: The awesome offices of Otra Arquitectura. That wall of plants is a clever idea.
4. Cube Me And while we’re on cool architecture sites check this web magazine out. Where to Start: The Blob. A new take on the backyard home office.
5. The Decoist And last one. Another web magazine that covers architecture, furniture and interior design. Amazing really that there is enough stuff out there for them all to cover. Where to Start: The office section offers some good inspiration.
Balance, Design, Products, Technology
March 8, 2010
By Cerentha Harris
A self-confessed neat freak and organizing fanatic Benita Larsson lives in “a little gray 1930′s house” with her husband, young son and two cats. They’ve lived their for 11 years and “while haven’t made any major structural changes we have made our mark on every nook and cranny.” And when she’s not blogging about her house at Chez Larsson or selling her punch art from her online store, Benita works in the marketing department of a Swedish chain of stores where she is the visual merchandiser in charge of marketing campaign themes and window displays.
How long have you worked from home…and where is ‘home’? Home is in a Stockholm suburb in Sweden. I started working from home one day a week a year ago. Fridays are good days in many ways!
What does an average work day involve? I blog and the work I do is mostly unpaid and blog related; I help readers out with projects, I take photos and edit them for blog posts, I answer interview questions, prepare photo requests and occasionally invoice ads.
Is there any form of technology that really inspires you and helps you in your work? About a week ago I got a Wacom Bamboo tablet and I’m dying to learn how to use it properly. If it works the way I hope, it will help me out enormously when sketching. Now all I need are a few more hours in the day to sit down and learn…
How do you organize your space? I try to keep everything as organized and clutter free as possible. My desk space is really small so anything lying about will disturb my arm movement. Everything has a designated spot and if I want to add anything something else must go. As for virtual space I just try to keep bookmarks organized and to a minimum and photos and documents in named folders. I keep my files backed up online but also got an external hard drive recently and transferred a lot of photo folders that I don’t use daily to it. That freed up a lot of space and made the lap top less cluttered.
What item from your desktop can you not do without? I can’t live without my laptop. It’s sick but I’m constantly at it. I think I need to take a lap top free weekend but I fear I’d die in the process. Ok, that determines it. I HAVE to take a laptop-free weekend. On a low tech note I love the four slots we have built in our home office unit. There’s one for my husband Martin, one for our son Wille, one for me and one for bills to be paid. It’s what keeps the desk top clutter free. Any piece of paper lying about goes into the owners slot and that person knows where to look for it when it’s missing from plain view.
What inspires you? Other creative people; bloggers, crafters, photographers, Martin and Wille.