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How To Organize Your Home Office

Shafir Ahmad

June 11, 2007

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Does your home office look like a tornado tore through it? Did you know that the average disorganized person has approximately 3,000 documents at home? Disorganization can cost you lost production time and money. It is a fact that people will spend one year of their life looking for lost objects or documents. That is one year that you could spend being productive, if you were organized.

If the thought of organizing your home office is overwhelming to you, try separating your office into sections. Start with one small section of the room and once that section is organized move to the next small section. This may take a little longer, but remember, it took a little while for your office to get in such a mess, therefore it may take a little while to straighten it out. Whatever you do, once you get one small section done, maintain it.

The easiest place to start would probably be your desk. Step back and take a long look at it. Is it so cluttered with papers and computer equipment that you find it difficult to work on? If so, go through all the papers on your desk. Throw away any documents not needed and file away ones that you will use later. Only keep the ones available that are relevant to your current project. Can these documents be scanned and saved on a disk or on your computer? This will help reduce clutter even more.

Now look at your computer equipment It is taking up too much room on your desk? Get a flat screen monitor. This will free up a lot of space. Buy a separate table for the printer. Get one that has plenty of storage space underneath for printing supplies. Invest in a keyboard tray that mounts under the desk to keep the keyboard off of your workspace. If your desk is against a wall, utilize the space on the wall above the desk. Mount attractive cabinets or shelves here to use for more storage for files, reference material and computer disks or cds.

Now attack the papers that are cluttering up your office. Have two bins available. One is the shredding bin for papers that need shredded and the other is the keep bin for papers that need filed away. Tackle the paper piles one pile at a time. Read through them carefully to make sure it is nothing that you have to keep, and then throw it in the appropriate bin. There is no reason to hang onto that old utility bill unless you need it for tax purposes. The same with receipts. If you are keeping a receipt for warranty purposes, staple it to the user's manual.

Once all the papers are weeded through, go through your filing cabinet and clean out all the old papers that you do not need. File your current documents and create new files as needed. Shred everything, even if you think it doesn't need shredded. Shredded paper takes up less room and therefore you will be able to get more into the trash bin.

These are some general ideas for organizing your home office. Search the web for more ideas or look through organizing magazines. The most important thing to remember about organizing your home office is, once it is organized, keep it that way!

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