Whether you’re working from home now or you have a designated home office space that you only use for occasion projects or administrative work, it can be difficult to keep a home office area clean and organized. In many homes, the office serves as a catch-all for papers and items that don’t have any other place to go. This can cause a lot of clutter to build up, which can make it hard for you to effectively use your office space.
To help you combat this, here are three tips for keeping your home office space organized.
Take Care Of Paper Each Day
The very first thing you should do to start better organizing your office space, according to Toni Hammersley, a contributor to HGTV, is to get control of the paper clutter that fills up your space. While this can be an intimidating task, sorting your papers into three categories can make this easier: shred it, file it, or take care of it.
If you get too much paper to shred or throw away, you may need to save space by making your trash smaller and more compact. And for the papers that you’re needing to keep, make sure you have a filing system in place so these papers don’t wind up as being part of any future messes. Then, when you get new papers coming into your office space, deal with them each day so that they don’t have a chance to accumulate too much.
Get More Storage Than You Currently Need
While it’s good to have enough storage space so that everything you have in your office has a place to be where it’s out of the way, it’s a fair assumption to make that you’ll have more things coming into your office that you’ll eventually need to store there.
Because of this, it’s a good idea to bring in more storage than you currently need. By using storage options like shelves or cubbies, Shelby Deering, a contributor to The Spruce, shares that you can fill the space that you need filled and then decorate the rest with cute items until those shelves or cubbies need to be used for storage as well.
Clear Out Out-Of-Date Items
One of the most common reasons why home offices get too cluttered and disorganized is because items that come into that space never seem to make their way out. Especially on bulletin boards, calendars, or message boards, it’s easy to take care of something and then just cover it up with something new.
To take care of this issue, Susan Ward, a contributor to The Balance Small Business, recommends that you take anything that’s out-of-date or has already happened or been taken care of and then throw it away. This will clear space for future events, ideas, or announcements that are actually relevant to your work and your life now.
If you’re having a hard time working in your disorganized home office, consider using the tips mentioned above to help you get this space under control.
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