I’m a reporter who’s going to be working from my Brooklyn apartment for at least the next 6 months. Here’s exactly how I rearranged my bedroom to make it work as an office.

• The company I report for went fully remote in March to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, and I’ll be working from home for at least another six months.
• To prepare for long-term remote work, I moved into the largest room in my unit and rearranged the space to function as my office and my bedroom using a cloth partition to divide the room into two sections.
• I’ve been struggling to maintain a balance between my work life and my personal life for the last four months, so I found a way to literally separate the two.
• My job is stressful, even from home. After speaking to a therapist about how nature benefits mental health, I brought plants into my space.
• Here’s exactly how I arranged the space to serve me as a reporter while maintaining a work-life balance.
• Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.

I work remotely from my bedroom in Brooklyn’s Bed-Stuy neighborhood. For $950 a month, a get 150 square feet to myself in an apartment where I share a bathroom, kitchen, and living space with two roommates.

I’ll be reporting from home for at least another six months, so I decided to move into the biggest bedroom, which used to look like this.

Before I moved in, a queen-sized bed took up most of the space in the room.

I replaced the queen-sized bed that came with the room with my own full-sized one. This way, I was able to fit the bed against the longer wall …

… while still leaving a small walkway through the space.

Next, I set up my work station. I used an entryway table better-suited to my previous room. It’s not ideal, since there’s no leg room underneath, but it’s a desk I already paid for, so I’m using it.

After four months of struggling to maintain a balance between my work life and my personal life, I realized I needed to find a way to literally separate the two.

To separate the bed from the workspace, I used a cloth partition that I made out of a tapestry by cutting two tiny holes into its top corners and hooking them onto the ceiling.

This makes my room feel almost like two rooms without taking up any of the floor space.

So when I’m relaxing, I can’t even see my office space without moving the tapestry.

This is what the personal side of my room looks like. It includes my bed, desktop computer, wardrobe, hobbies, and most of my plants.

“Studies show that just looking at nature calms our brain,” therapist Mark Loewen told me for a story I previously wrote for Business Insider. So I filled my room with plants. Six of them live on my window sill, one hangs from the ceiling …

Source: Business Insider

… and I keep one with me at my desk during the workday.

The right corner of my room is reserved for my hobbies. I keep my electric drum set, ukulele, and film developing materials back here.

Playing drums helps me de-stress from work. I typically hop on the kit during breaks to play a few funky beats.

So far, this remote work situation is serving me better than my previous setups.