The Best Way to Organize Your Desk Drawers

Are you drawers full of pens, paperclips, hand sanitizers, and loose papers?  When finally unjam them enough to get open do you find crumpled up papers, notes, and receipts?  Then it is time for you to organize desk drawers.  You may have one junk drawer to tackle or a stack of desk drawers, either way you can make yourself more productive by tackling the project today.

Empty Out Your Drawers:    

When you organize desk drawers a good starting point is emptying them out.  Once your drawers are empty you can clean them out completely.  Replace any worn or ripped drawer lining. Replace it with nonslip lining.  This will help keep your drawer organized once you finish!

*A Quick Tip When You Organize Desk Drawers:   Do you want to keep your drawers rolling smooth?  Pull out your drawers and rub over all of your metal glides with wax paper.  The wax will help everything run more smoothly together.  You’ll have to repeat this process occasionally, use it as a good reminder to keep your drawers organized.

Don’t Keep Every Item You Have:

Once you get your drawers emptied out take a look at what you have.  Do you have a wide ranging collection of pens you’ve collected from banks, stores, and other places?  It is okay to pare down.  You don’t have to keep every pen, pencil, highlighter, or marker in your drawer.  Toss them, give them away, or find a Tupperware to store them on a high closet shelf until you run out of the handful you keep in your drawer.

When organizing paperwork look at scanning paperwork onto your computer as an option for reducing paperwork that you have to keep in a file drawer.

Organize What is in Your Desk Drawer:

It will be easier to see what you can get rid of when you know what you have.  Group all of your like things together. 

This means pens and pencils, highlighters, staples, post it notes, ect.  To get started organizing paperwork sort through what you have.  If you can quickly shred and get rid of credit card offers and other junk mail you’ve been holding on to great!

You can buy organizing trays or various styles of drawer dividers to organize desk drawers.  Or you can use every day items from around your home.  Small Tupperware, canning jars, ice cube trays, or even a muffin tin can be used to hold small office supplies in your drawers.  When organizing paperwork loose papers can be corralled in shallow drawers with cookie sheets or the lids to shoe boxes.

Designate Drawer Hierarchy:

Give the items that you use most often prime real estate.  Sit in your desk chair and reach for the drawer that feels most natural.  You are probably reaching for the top drawer closest to your dominant hand.  That should be the drawer you keep your most frequently used supplies in. 

The further away the drawer the less important its contents should be, or at least the less frequently you need to access them. 

*A QUICK Tip When Organizing Papers:   You want to make keeping up with your filing as easy as possible.  From your desk chair, without moving your chair a far way, you should be able to grab a file folder, put something in it, and file it. 

Keeping these things easily accessible will really help your chances of keeping on top of the task of organizing paperwork.

You’ll feel great once your drawers are organized.  Organizing paperwork and office supplies will make you a happier, more productive, and more productive!