3 Steps to an Organized Home Office

Are you ready to organize your home office?  This article will take you through the fast and simple way to organize your home office.

1. Remove the Clutter:  For many people, just being surrounded by clutter can lower our productivity.  First you will need a trash bag and a recycling bin.  Second, clear out two different open spaces – such as a corner in your office – this gives you space to stage items. 

One of these newly cleared spaces is for things “to be determined”, this means you will need to make a decision about them – either to keep it or get rid of it.  The second empty space is for items to “go somewhere else.”   This means that either the items have a home elsewhere in your house, need to donated, need to be returned to someone they were borrowed from, or need to be given away to someone.

You’re ready to start! Turn up your favorite upbeat song and literally run around your office collecting up garbage and recycling and tossing it!

If while cleaning your office you find an item and are not sure if you can throw it away, put it in the “to be determined” space.  

Try to get all of your garbage and recycling collected up before your favorite song ends, make it into a game.  As an added bonus you get some exercise in as well!

Put on a new song and collect up all of the items that go elsewhere, and put them in your second empty “go elsewhere” space.  See if you can do this task during the course of one song too.

1. Organize Your Cables & Cords:  Many of us have an abundance of tangled cords and cables in our offices, which create clutter.  They also make a room feel very messy. Plus it can mean more wasted time to figure out which cords goes with which electronic.  Cords are notorious dust collectors and can be tripping hazards, especially for children. 

Cable Capture Cord Organizers is what I recommend to get your cords and cables contained.  I’ve tested nearly every cord organizer on the market and, in my opinion, these are the BEST!  

1. Get Your Papers and Files Organized, Once and For All:  It’s time, if you haven’t done this already! On average Americans waste 55.2 minutes EVERYDAY looking for things. The #1 thing time is spent looking for? Lost papers and files! If your home office filing system is well-organized it should take you 30 seconds or less to find any piece of paper you are looking for.

Papers that you need to take action on should be in an Active File System, this is part of your home office filing system. This part of the system makes sure that your papers are brought to your attention when you need to take action on them. You won’t miss any important deadlines or forget about something. It allows you to focus on your everyday work in your office and not concentrate solely on stacks of important papers scattered about.

Follow these three easy steps to be on your way to having a more organized home office andhome office filing system.