As anyone who has worked will testify, the Monday morning blues are nothing new.

If you are lucky enough not to have experienced them (and I’m reaching out to a tiny portion of readers at this point), then it basically involves having insufficient motivation to rock up to work. That’s the polite way of describing it and while we all get on and make the journey to the office or your work environment of choice, it takes a while to get going.

It would be fair to say that 2020 has changed things a little. Monday mornings certainly look a little different for me anyway; they now involve rolling out of bed and into my home office.

Is it easier? Slightly, although that’s perhaps changing.

Up until March last year, I had never worked from home. At first it lived up to all of my expectations; there was no commute, no water cooler chat and a much better work-life balance.

As things progress, it gets a little harder. Your home becomes your workplace and particularly on Mondays, it is back to the struggle.

This is why I have made extra effort with my home office over recent times. I’ve tried a few things, but the three points I am going to talk about today have been the most successful.

The first is short and sweet and focusses on Avas Flowers. Avas Flowers have delivered to my neighborhood for a long time now, and I have become a regular customer. I make sure, without question, that a fresh bouquet (such as these on the Avas Flowers Pinterest page) sits on my office windowsill. Why? It adds freshness. It adds a sense of life. On a meeting-free day, I might not speak to anyone. Now, I’m not crazy to start speaking to plants, but it does bring a sense of life and nature to my surroundings – which is crucial for those longer days.

Next, it’s onto my lighting. For a long time I had a basic ceiling light. It was no frills – and did the job.

Then, winter came, and my plans were in tatters. As ugly as traditional office lights are, they are less tiring than a domestic ceiling light. I found that my room was painfully synthetically bright and I was struggling to work in the early hours of the morning, or later in the afternoon when darkness came.

This is where I invested in two things. One, was a SAD light, to try and combat the winter blues. The second was a basic desk light, which I try and use alongside my main room light to provide something a little softer.

The effect has been terrific and I find that I can work much better than in those once-problematic times.

Finally, my last point is about clutter. Again, during the early days of working from home, the clutter didn’t get to me. Everything felt a lot more temporary, so blending my work and home life wasn’t a problem.

Well, things have changed. I was finding it increasingly difficult to carry on with my work when I had mountains of papers next to me, and other general spare bedroom mess. The solution here was cheap (it was actually free) and simple (although it took a weekend). I turned to all of the classic decluttering tips, and the rest, as they say, was history.