How To Organize Your Home Office – 7 Septs To An Organized Home Office
Rooms that are cluttered and dirty are not conducive for working, which is why a home office with disorganized file stacks and a desk covered with documents and other stuff isn’t the best location to work.
It might be aggravating to search through a chaotic stack of paperwork for all of your paperwork, especially if you are in a hurry. Working from home may be extremely convenient and effective if your home office isn’t a nightmare.
When you’re working from home, how do you feel? Is it complete chaos? Organizing your home office will help you feel more in control and improve your overall self-esteem.
Any space in a house that has to be organized will necessitate habit modifications. Bad behaviors are to blame for your current predicament. You will be able to complete tasks more quickly if your home office is well-organized.
You won’t be afraid to enter the room. You will be less likely to put off whatever it is that you need or want to undertake.
First and foremost, you must have a clear vision of what you want to accomplish in the space. Will you be doing a lot of computer research and playing video games? Is it to pay bills? Do you have any hobbies that you work on there?
We don’t give much thought to home office organizing until it is too late. You realize you’ll need a home office, so you make one.
And while you work at your home office, things pile up around you – old coffee cups, a stack of papers you’ve meant to put somewhere, software boxes, invoices, orphaned pens – until one day, when something gets in your way or disappears for the hundredth time, you realize it’s long past time to get your home office organized.
Picture yourself in the room, working. Visualizing yourself will assist you in determining what you require and where it is required. Your desk will most likely be your primary workspace.
You may require a second workspace. The most important thing to keep in mind is that your workspaces are not storage spaces.
It takes a lot of effort to organize your entire home office. At first sight, it might seem overwhelming (and even the second and third). If you’re feeling ambitious, you may use this seven-step approach to make your workspace more useful and appealing.
If you’re not ready for a complete overhaul but still need to find things, here are seven modest, doable steps you can take right now to organize your home office.
The suggestions below should start you well on your way to a well-organized home office.
1. Pick Three Things and Throw Them Out
We’ll start with something simple to get you in the mood and clear some space in your home office. There are many more than three things on your desk or strewn about your home office that can go straight from your desk to the trash or recycle container.
In your home office, it’s easy to let paperwork pile up. Get the clutter under control before it takes over your home. Use the System of Three to go through every piece of paper in your office: shred/toss it, file it, or act on it. Use a color-coded filing system to organize your key documents.
Take a careful look. Is it really necessary to save those outdated magazines? What about that broken pen? What happened to those empty snacks pudding containers? No, it’s not true. Get them out of here!
You don’t have to limit yourself to just three things. If you come across any other apparent candidates for the garbage, toss them away as well. You may even ask yourself, “Does this paperweight, photo frame, gel tipped pen…spark joy?” as author and celebrity organizer Marie Kondo suggests. Toss it if it doesn’t bring you joy.
2. Weed One Filing Drawer
Most home offices’ filing cabinets are the rulers of junk, which is strange given that we think of them as clutter remedies.
With years of collected junk to go through, sorting through a standard-sized four-drawer file cabinet might feel like an archeological excavation. So let’s begin with a little step. Organize your home office by going through one drawer and deleting everything that is no longer relevant or required. (However, bear in mind that you must retain your company documents for six years.)
You should shred any documents or papers that you no longer need. You may be able to reuse outdated file directories.
Take it a step further by purchasing a cardboard file box to hold outdated files that you need to save but don’t require access to right away. Place the box somewhere other than your home office.
3. Clear Your Bulletin or Message Board
Organize your most crucial documents in binders for quick access in the event of an emergency. In the event of a medical emergency, for example, you may pull out your medical binder and have all the information you need right away. Here are some of the most popular binder categories:
- Medical
Your family’s medical records should be kept in this binder. Everything is arranged in one place if you need to see a new doctor or have a complicated medical diagnostic.
Medical documents, immunization records, and medications for your dogs should all be kept in this binder.
- Auto
Use this binder to keep track of all auto repairs, maintenance records, and insurance documents.
- Manuals
This binder is perfect for keeping all of your manuals in one location. You may also divide the binder into subcategories like appliances, electronics, gardening, and home.
- House
This is where you’ll save all of your house-related information, such as maintenance, pest control, security systems, and handyman contact numbers.
- Personal
This binder may be used to hold anything that doesn’t fit into another file or category.
Many home workplaces include bulletin boards or message boards. Unfortunately, rather than keeping us informed about current events and assisting us in keeping our lives structured, they frequently devolve into cluttered time capsules.
Right now, take a look at yours. Is there anything posted or written about anything you need to accomplish today, or perhaps this week? Instead, what do you see? What about the children’s drawings? Do you have any photos from your camping vacation last summer?
Keep in mind why you’re organizing your home office. We’re not only decluttering; we’re also putting together a workstation that will make you more productive.
There’s nothing wrong with having images of your children and family on display in your house, but not at your home office. Please remove them and place them somewhere else. Then erase all of the previous messages of the board. You’re ready to take the next step.
4. Organize One Desk Drawer
Drawers are notorious for being dumping places in general, but they’re especially so in a home office. Begin small. Select one desk drawer and empty it.
Depending on your preferences, you may categorize books by genre, color, or size. Organizing by color will give a lovely design element to your home while also keeping it clutter-free and orderly.
Sort through the contents, tossing out everything that is no longer usable, and returning misplaced items to their proper placement. (For example, the recipes should usually be kept in the kitchen rather than at your desk.)
Then, using the different parts of the organizer tray to keep items separate and simple to find, place items back into the drawer using a plastic organizer tray (available at any office supply store).
5. Clear Your Desktop for a Week
What is the most crucial real estate in terms of productivity? Your computer’s desktop! Even if it’s tempting to purchase a stylish, modern-looking stapler, tape dispenser, and paperclip holder on the top of your desk, resists.
When so much is done on the computer, you’re unlikely to utilize them. You should maintain the space uncluttered and store the objects you rarely use in a drawer.
To begin, obtain a huge cardboard box (or two). Remove all objects from your workplace desk except those required for your jobs, such as your computer and phone. Place whatever you’ve taken from your desk in the cardboard boxes.
Take a minute to pause, minimize this article, and examine your computer’s desktop. Do you have paperwork strewn throughout the house? Is it so thick that you can’t see the lovely picture? Are there files all over your child’s head? It’s also time to clear off your digital desktop.
Create folders on your hard drive and move your stuff from your desktop to those folders. To maintain your information organized in a secure place, you may use USB flash drives or a service like Dropbox or Google Drive.
Consider employing a cloud backup service that will take care of your backups for you. You’ll have to pay for the service, but it’s a tiny fee to pay compared to the time and money you’ll lose if your computer dies and all your data is lost.
Create a mail station to keep track of the paper that comes into the home office. Make a folder for each family member’s incoming and outgoing mail, as well as correspondence to file and bills. File the mail as soon as it arrives at the postal station. Then go through each folder once a week for a few minutes.
Place the boxes in a convenient yet out-of-the-way location, so you don’t trip over them. Then go about your business as usual. If you need anything that isn’t on your desk while working at your home office, take it out of the box and arrange it in a suitable location on or around your desk.
Get your desk copyholder out of the box and set it back on your desk if you find yourself word processing from typed copy.
You’ll have everything you need to operate productively on your desk or close at hand at the end of the week — and nothing else. What’s left in the box belongs someplace else, either properly filed if it’s a vital piece of paper or thrown away if it’s just cluttering up your workstation.
6. Your Home Office Organization Can Stop Here
It will if you want it to stop here. As promised, here are five small yet practical ways to arrange your home office. If you like, you may go even further with your home office arrangement.
Organize all of the drawers of your desk. Make the most of your filing system. If you wish, you may go through the entire home office organizing makeover.
Find out how to put together a document management system. But that’ll have to wait. Hopefully, the organization you’ve done allows you to get more done at your home office when you sit down to work.
7. Get a Bigger Trash Can
Do you want to spruce up your office quickly? Overflowing garbage indicates a lack of order. If you discard a lot of items out, purchase a bigger one or invest in a shredder.
A larger trash can may also serve as a reminder to toss things away rather than putting them in the stack of procrastination—you know, the stack of papers that you need to file but loathe filing so much that it resembles a miniature tower.
To be clear, most individuals do not have this issue, but if you enjoy organizing, keep in mind that not everything needs a container, a cubby, or a tray with a dozen dividers. Bins, cubbies, and dividers take up a lot of room, weighing the benefits against the space lost. It’s also possible to be overly structured.
Conclusion
There is no better moment than now. Let’s get this party started. Take a look around right now and see what you could toss, scan, or destroy. Take it and put it to good use. Isn’t it true that the first step is always the most difficult?
