Home Office Organizing
Here are some quick ways you can organize your Home Office.
If you're ready to streamline your office and make it really start working for you, here are some easy ways you can get started organizing!
You just don't like going in there. It's dark, it's cluttered, and it just has an abandoned air to it. Your home office is really just a glorified term for "storage room", and rather than deal with it you work at the kitchen table. Sound familiar?
Well, no more! Having a home office that really works can really cut down on clutter in the rest of the home. If you put some time and effort into this room it can really affect the day-to-day running of your home in a positive way. Spend two days on this project and it's guarenteed that you'll use the room in the future. Sweat equity can work wonders!
Your home office is where you are going to "work" your household. If you work out of your home, it's also going to be where you make your money, so making sure this room functions as it should is pretty vital.
The first thing we need to do is get it cleared out. Whatever is in there right now has to be decided upon, so make 4 piles: Keep, Donate, Trash, and Deciding. The Deciding pile can have a shelf life of 6 months, so if you haven't used it or thought of it 6 months after this project, it needs to go out of your home because it obviously just isn't that important.
If you have the time and the means, it's really going to pay off to paint this room. Going with a bright, stimulating color like yellow or bright blue can re-energize this space. This is also where some of that sweat equity is going to come into play. If you take the time and money to repaint this room and make it cheerful, you're going to use it. Promise!
The next thing that needs considering is the desk. If this room is where you're going to be working all day, an "L" shaped desk is best. Your computer, phone, fax, etc. can go on one wing, leaving the other for you to spread out on. It also makes sense to keep your phone on your left hand side, so you can talk and take notes with your right hand at the same time (and for you Lefties out there, the opposite holds true, phone on right, write with left).
It's also advisable to keep this room free of too many personal things. They can be distracting, and will visually clutter up the space.
If this home office is just for your household management you can certainly get away with a smaller desk, as long as it has a drawer for hanging files. You can have a file for each credit card, your electric bill, your auto insurance...the list can go on forever. A handy tip is to have a file for each bill you have to pay during the month. A great way to do this is simply look at the mail you get over the course of a couple of weeks. When you walk in with the mail sort it immediately, getting rid of the obvious junk and recycling it. Everything else can go in a basket in, say, your kitchen. Every night or every few nights bring the basket up to your office and process the mail. Put bills to be paid in a letter sorter ON the desk (if it's in sight, you won't forget about them), shred what needs to be shredded, and file the rest.
It's also handy to have some sort of In Box so that magazines and periodicals you want to read are in sight as well. When this pile gets to be more than 4 inches high and you still haven't touched it, you might be too busy to read all the magazines you're getting in and you might want to cancel your subscriptions!
One last thing: try keeping your desktop free of all the "paraphanalia" that goes with an office. You know what we're talking about- the stapler, the paper clip holder, the picture frames, the Post-It Notes...those things cause visual clutter and will be better off in a desk drawer. Keep the desktop as empty as possible so you have space to actually "work"!
