We rarely think about home office organisation until things go so far out of control that it’s impossible to ignore. Over time, your home or office will stack and layer things around, such as files, mugs, boxes, bills, you name it. Eventually, one day, you will reach the point where you lose something in the piles of items, and you realise enough is enough; you need to get things sorted.
Effective Tips to Organise Your Home Office
Pick Three Things and Throw Them Out
Starting your home organisation with something easier to get in the mood and clear space, you should consider putting three things away daily. Small steps will eventually bring out a long-term benefit to your organisational skills. There are probably more than three things that need to be put away, but starting small will give you an easier time handling everything. Look closer and consider whether you need certain items or whether you can just put them away or dump them in the rubbish bin.
Weed One Filing Drawer
Filing cabinets are something usually becoming clogged with clutter in most offices, which is the opposite of the reason we buy them. In reality, we tend to stuff them with anything we can’t seem to place in our office, any paper we want to throw away but think we might need later. So instead of making the filing drawer into a rubbish bin, you should sort through it. Start small and organise your home office by choosing one drawer and going through it, removing anything you think is unnecessary and ready to go. Remember, you still need to keep your business records going a few years back, so choose wisely.
Clear Your Bulletin or Message Board
Message boards and bulletin boards are standard features in many offices. Still, they often turn into bona fide time capsules of forgotten post-it notes and documents instead of keeping us posted on up-to-date events and information. You should consider whether you need to have these up there or whether you can do a better job decluttering it and making it useful again.
Organise One Desk Drawer
Drawers are a veritable dumping ground of all items in a home office. You should start small by opening a single drawer and taking everything out. Sort through it, throw away whatever you deem unnecessary and put the rest back inside. Insert a plastic organiser inside, found in most office supplies stores, and put things in an organised manner inside it. This will keep things easy to find and separate as you move forward with your daily needs.
Clear Your Desktop for a Week
Take everything from your office desk, except for items you need to get the job done, such as your phone and computer. You should get a large cardboard box or a few of those. Put everything you remove from the desktop into the cardboard boxes, then put them somewhere accessible but out of the way. That should stop the clutter from becoming annoying, and when you work in your home office, you will have a chance to fish whatever you need out of the box and put it where it needs to go around the desk. For example, if you need to work from a typed copy, you should get the copy holder out of your box and put it where it belongs on the desk. If you don’t use a specific object often enough, you should put it in the box and out of sight.
