What's the Best Way to Organize a Home Office?

Nearly a quarter of Americans work from home at least part of the time. Whether you are among this group or you simply enjoy having a home office to give you a place for paying bills, storing tax paperwork, and managing your correspondence, a disorganized home office can lead to a lot of wasted time and energy. If you’re working at home, it can also cost you money. There is no one best way to organize a home office , but we have listed a few tips below. In addition, the office designers at Custom Storage Solutions can help you by creating systems that work so you can be more productive in your home office.

The “touch it once” approach means that when a piece of paper comes into your home, you touch it one time while you decide what to do with it. This can eliminate unsightly and stressful piles of paperwork from accumulating on the flat surfaces of your office.

Junk mail should go directly into a recycling bin. Find a plastic bin of some sort that you can keep in an office drawer or even on the floor under or against your desk, and put junk mail into the bin as soon as it comes into your office (if you didn’t toss it in the bin in the garage on your way into the house, that is!).

Anything that needs to be acted upon (such as a bill to be paid or a contract that needs to be signed) should be placed in a temporary filing bin on your desk. Once or twice per week, you should set aside some time, which could range from 10 minutes to an hour, to empty this bin. That is when you will pay the bills, sign papers, and place documents in your long-term filing. If an item is no longer needed but has sensitive information on it, be sure to shred it before placing in the recycling bin.

Many Ohio homeowners find items accumulating over time and put it on their mental to-do list. One of these days, you’ll get around to straightening up this shelf or that cabinet. Instead of waiting for “one of these days” to come, set aside 15 minutes to work on purging items. You will be shocked at how quickly you can get through the clutter when you are focused. Before you begin, pull over your garbage can, your recycling bin, and an empty laundry basket. If something needs to be thrown away or recycled, place it in the appropriate container. The basket is for items that should be put away in another part of your home. After the 15 minutes is over, take an additional five minutes to put those items away and to dump the garbage and recycling in the proper outdoor receptacles.

If you are finding it hard to find anything to throw away but your office is overrun with clutter, try this strategy: Place items that you think you might need again in a box, and close the box. Put the box in your garage or in some other area of your home. For the next six months, if you need one of those items, go and get it, but don’t get anything else that you don’t need for a specific purpose. At the end of six months, dispose of whatever is in the box; you might donate it to a thrift store or it might truly be useless, in which case you should toss it in the trash. If you haven’t used it in six months, it’s very unlikely that you will need it again.

Some people like for everything to be put away so it’s out of sight, while others find it difficult to remember to take care of items that are put away where they are not in plain sight. Neither style is right or wrong; you just need to identify which group you belong to so you can decide how to best store your items in the home office.

If you tend to want things put away and you don’t forget about them when they are not sitting out, talk to your home officedesigner about installing a lot of cabinets and drawers. They will give you the space you need to store items and to categorize them depending on your needs.

If, however, you prefer to have your things out where you can see them, office shelves will probably work better for you. You can add clear or labeled bins to help you remember where everything is.

Bulletin or magnetic boards are also a great way for you to keep items out where you will see them without allowing them to clutter up your work area. Just remember to weed through whatever you place on the board periodically so you don’t end up with so many papers and reminders that you can’t find anything.