As an organizational expert, I am a huge fan of non-traditional use of space.

Meaning: Just because your home has a dining room doesn’t mean you have to put a dining room table and chairs there. Do you dine or entertain often? Or do you have a rarely-used dining set sitting in a spacious, light-filled room while your home office is tucked away in the dark guest bedroom where you hate to work? (As was the case with the client whose “after” is pictured above.)

Your home environment needs to fully support the life you are living now – not the life you were living a decade ago, or the life you aspire to in the future, or the life you think you “should” be living. If your space works for you right now, you will have a far better chance of being able to manifest the life you are striving for.

To that end, I’ve helped clients turn their dining rooms into home offices, voice-over studios, and pantries. Right now, the room in my home that was designed as the dining room is used as our living room. Why? Because that’s what suits the flow of our life best. With clients, I’ve turned a bedroom into a closet, a laundry room into an office, a coat closet into a media library, and a kitchen into a supply room. (That last one was for someone in a small bungalow who never cooked.)

It’s remarkable how much these “outside-the-box” rearrangements help my clients feel more comfortable, more energized, and more focused. I urge you not underestimate the degree to which your environment directly affects your level of creativity.

But don’t just take my word for it…

In April, playwright Richard Greenberg contributed an essay to the Los Angeles Times about his experience writing his latest play. The middle third of the piece was devoted to the singular change that made the current incarnation of the play possible: he moved his desk from where it was – the room in his apartment designated as “office” – to the spot that he really wanted to work in.

He writes:

“But this new play of mine: not happening. I was so embroiled in my character’s limited destinies, so absolutely sure there was no way out for them that it had all the exhilaration you get watching a guy trip on a shoelace.

I put it aside.

Now I’m going to tell you about my apartment. This will strike you as a structural mishap, but I promise I’m going somewhere with it.

I like my apartment very much… I’ve worked hard on this apartment for several years in conjunction with a designer who at this point would have to be counted my most constant companion and the place now so surreally resembles my platonic conception of ‘Apartment’ that I live daily with the mild disappointment of the achieved.

…possibly the nicest room in my apartment is my small office… As I said, it’s the room where I write, and it’s a beautiful room to look at and a calming room to search for a book in and, as the only room in the house that doesn’t get decent light, a perfectly lousy room to write in.

…I know a playwright who works brilliantly in a sort of sealed capsule painted the color of Gulden’s mustard. But I can’t do it any longer. I tried for three years, I managed, but I’m done… I may not want to disport myself in the sun but I like having it around. The (sad little) play had set in a drawer for months when I decided: I was going to finish it. But first I had to alter my arrangement.

One night (midnight for some reason and with violent resolve), I swapped out the sitting room and the office… I knew it was right.

The next day, I resumed the play. It would be absurd to say that everything changed with the switch of venue, that a process I’d found crabbed and timid became suddenly flowing and exuberant, but that’s what happened… What my new, sunstruck mental spaciousness gave me was that ability to hear my characters’ potential to act – I was filled with a happy why-not-ness.

…if I hadn’t happened to read the play that shortchanged a gifted young writer’s talent and seen the movie that crystallized an aging genius’ vision, my play would have been different from what it is.

And if I hadn’t moved my desk seven feet, I would never have written it at all.”

To read Mr. Greenberg’s full essay, click here.