There’s no place like home – no wonder other people opt to work from the comfort of their homes. The concept sounds great unless your home office is a huge mess and disaster. Avoid that horrible situation and achieve the ultimate comfort of working in your home office by following these tips!
Tip 1. Start with organizing your mail.
To gain control over all that mail that comes in every day make a mail station. Either use those magnetic office folders on the wall or create a file system for incoming and outgoing letters, mail for filing, and bills. If it is sorted as soon as it comes, it is so much easier to manage. Then schedule a block of time at least each week to go through those folders. Of course, if you have a business operated from your home, then you need to know what has arrived in the mail every day and sort it immediately.
Tip 2. Purge papers.
Even before you know it, papers are already piled up in your home office. Get in command of the clutter before it takes most of your space and you’d lose track of where is which. If it’s beginning to look like a mess, go through every piece by using the so-called System of Three: shred/toss, file or take action.
Tip 3. Color-code your filing system.
If your filing system is very well-organized, then you have a functional home office space for working in. Burt even if it is well organized, this system may still help you with the filing, you can separate the documents in a system of five (or any number of your choice) color-coded categories:
- Blue – Bills
- Red – Medical
- Green – Financial
- Brown – Personal
- Yellow – Insurance
- Orange – Business
Just label each folder according to your needs.
Tip 4. Make a Printing Station.
Assign a space in your home office for your printer with all the printer supplies nearby. If you have a wireless printer, it could be placed wherever it is convenient, which means not on your desk. Consider putting it on top of a cabinet that holds all your printing supplies, including labels and envelopes for mailing.
Tip 5. Clear your desk and store supplies in drawers.
Invest in a cabinet with drawers for the office supplies to keep your desk area clear and uncluttered. A simple five drawer cabinet, for instance, could hold your pens, markers, pencils, erasers, paper clips, and staplers in one or two drawers. Then use the remaining drawers for sticky notes, notepads, and hard plastic folders or binders for clients or presentations.
Tip 6. Use a label marker.
Get yourself a good label marker and label your drawers, files and storage boxes. If you use boxes to store tax information in them, write the year on each one so that when the next tax season rolls around, you will know which boxes are no longer needed and you can shred those documents.
With labels on your drawers, files, and boxes you should be able to quickly find what you are looking for. That will save you both the time and effort!
Tip 7. Store similar materials together.
Organize and arrange your home office into categories, gathering similar items in one place. You could opt for a desk organizer or trays to hold files that are used every day. By doing this, your room will be more functional.
Usual categories are:
- Writing Tools (markers, pens, pencils)
- Stickies (sticky notes, tabs, stickers, etc.)
- Mail (envelopes, stamps, address labels)
- Budget (checkbook, calculator, bill calendar)
- Labeling (labeler and label tape)
- Tools (staple remover, straight cutter, staple, hole puncher)
Tip 8. Organize your books.
You can categorize them alphabetically according to their titles, authors or genre depending on your discretion. If you opt to arrange them by titles it will add a streamlined organization while giving your home office a clutter-free, kept-together- look.
Tip 9. Make Life Binders.
Have your most important documents in binders for easy-to-go in case of emergency. Like, take for example if you have a medical emergency, you could grab your binder for medical records, and you’ll have all the information needed right away.
Here are the most common binder categories:
- Medical – This is where your family’s medical documents are kept. If you need to go to a new doctor or if you have a very complicated diagnosis, everything is organized in one spot.
- Pet – This should have your pets’ shot, medical records, and medications.
- Car – This is designated for all repairs, maintenance records, and auto insurance papers.
- Manuals – Put all your manuals in here. You can separate this into sub-categories as electronics, appliances, and house.
- House – Gather all house-related info here, like pest control, maintenance, contact numbers, and security system.
- Personal – This can store anything which doesn’t fit in among other categories mentioned.
Tip 10. Maximize Wall Space.
You can use the space to hang calendars, whiteboards, filing systems, bulletin boards or chalkboards. You might not have known it, but there is much more space available in going vertical.
With these, you’ll be good to go in no time!
There you have it! These are excellent tips that we’ve gathered for to organize your home office. But if you want to have professional house cleaning and organizing, call them now! If you’re good alone, no problem! Happy organizing then!
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