4 Tips for Keeping Your Home Office Organized

If your disorganized office gets you down, you need a home office storage solution to put everything in order. Organization — or lack thereof — can be the difference between finding important household documents in a minute or an hour. And if you’re among the growing number of people who work from home, the state of your office impacts your daily life. Here are a few tips for ditching the clutter, building out the smartest storage and turning your office into one of your favorite rooms in the house.

Here are a few ideas to keep your home office organized and clutter-free.

1. Start With a Clean Slate

It’s hard to design a great home office while looking at a mess. Clear it out to assess what you have, both in space and stuff. That’s the first step in every organization project. You’ll want to toss everything that’s obvious clutter, of course, but you might also want to reconsider keeping a lot of document hard copies. For example, you may not need files for household bills if you can switch to electronic billing.

Wherever you can trim, you gain space for the things you really need. Imagine neat file drawers where your important documents are easy to spot, not crushed against other files brimming with billing statements. Clear the space, discard what you don’t need, and then move ahead with your design plan.

2. Create Efficient Office Work Zones

Think about the work that you do in your home office. Is the space primarily used for paying monthly bills and checking emails and social media? Or do you work from home with the usual trappings, including a printer and other equipment? If you see clients at home, that’s another important space consideration.

The way that you use the office helps you create work zones. And that helps keep one zone’s supplies from becoming clutter someplace else. You’ll probably want a desk, regardless of how you use the office. You might also want a station for your printer, supply storage, and perhaps a table and chairs for projects and client meetings. For every task, create a zone.

3. Think About Ergonomic Office Design

Have you ever noticed that some designs really seem to work, and others just don’t. A big part of of making sure that your home works as hard as you do, is Ergonomics. Your office has to be laid out so that tasks, lead to each other and all important measurements, procedures, and process considerations have to be well thought out, along with the physical characteristics of those using each station. Are you 6 foot 5? Or 4 foot 8? That all plays in to ergonomic decisions.

Also, you need a great chair to support your back. It helps if your design takes even small details into consideration. For example, even if you’re just paying your monthly bills, wouldn’t it be great if you could have all of those bills in one place when you’re ready to start, and all the way through the process you really don’t have to move much. Your envelopes, rubber stamps, postage, files, and the like are all within arms reach. The tasks go more quickly, and when you’re done everything is where it belongs and easily findable, should you need it. Think how much easier things will be at tax time!

Your desk and chair should have the right height and proportions for you, and everything that you use frequently should be placed within easy reach. Those are the building blocks for every workstation. Consider how you’ll use the station, and choose furniture and fixtures that fit you and the job. Working with a designer from the Closet Works lets you get all of your proportions correct.

4. Let Your Creativity Loose

Once you know which workstations you need and where they’ll fit, you can let your creativity go wild. Some people like the tidy look of cabinets for supplies and other storage. But for some home offices, a wall of cubbies lets you neatly store and stack everything from binders to books to copy paper. Add in a few accessories, such as sliding baskets, and smaller supplies stay contained and handy.

Maybe you need an oversized desk with filing cabinets under each end. If you work on a lot of projects, adding an island gives you space to spread out documents, swatches or drawings with the bonus of storage underneath. Your office design is limited only by your imagination. Who knows? You might decide to tuck a Murphy bed inside a cabinet so your office can transform into a guest room once in a while.

Home office organization begins with a great foundation. It’s not just a desk and a cabinet or two that make an office great. It’s getting the right furniture and accessories. With home storage solutions from the Closet Works, your space can work, function and look better than you imagine.

We help you take your home office from ordinary to extraordinary. Total customization; that’s what we’re about. And we make it affordable. Download our ebook: Optimizing Your Home Organization and learn more about an organized office and an organized home.