How to Declutter Your Home Office | 2 Things You Need To Know

Working from home generally means you have to be more disciplined than when being in the same premises as your superiors. You also need to be well organised so that you can find things easily. If you do lose things frequently and have to spend hours searching for them, this will adversely affect your productivity and so needs to be addressed.

If you are usually busy, your home office can soon become cluttered. That will make it more difficult to work effectively and you need to sort things out before the situation deteriorates too far.

Getting rid of Clutter in a Structured Manner

Decluttering anywhere can often seem a challenging and onerous task, so much so that many people are put off even attempting it. The trick is to break the task down into sections — the desk, filing cabinets, shelves, etc. — and deal with each one separately. If you do this on different days, the whole process seems much easier although you need to be careful not to spread it out too much so that it never gets finished.

Start by deciding what you need to keep close to hand, what is required less frequently and what you can get rid of. If you’re not sure about the latter, put items into storage and, if they’ve not been used after a year or so, get rid of them.

Things you do need to keep but don’t access much can go into archive storage like in a steel storage cabinets or any other cabinet or may possibly be digitised before getting rid of the paper copies. Anything needed frequently will have to be retained on the desktop or on shelves near to hand. A desk organiser is an essential item with separate trays — an in tray for received items that are to be dealt with, one for completed items that need to be filed away and other trays for items needing further processing.

One of the main features of a decluttered office is an adequate and properly organised filing system so you know where everything is and can find it easily. That means having sufficient filing cabinets, shelves and drawer space that are correctly labelled, as are the files that go in them.

Sort out everything that needs to be stored into logical and easily understood categories, then place them into correctly labelled folders and drawers. If necessary, set up an index system so you always know where everything is.

Keeping things Tidy and Organised

Getting your home office sorted out and decluttered is just the first step. After that, you need to ensure you keep up-to-date with everything so that you don’t fall back into the old, disorganised ways.

When you’ve finished with something, always put it away into its proper place or, at the very least, into a ‘to file’ tray so it will be put away later. However, don’t let this work mount up and set aside some time every day or so to keep everything organised and decluttered.

The secrets to success are discipline, organisation and having enough storage space of the correct kind. Whilst you’ll need to supply the first two elements yourself, we have a wide range of storage options to help you.

At the very least, get an office furniture to organise your things like a desk organiser for immediate tidiness, shelving for things you need frequently and filing cabinets for papers that have to be close at hand and easy to find. Supplement these with labelling for identification, accessories for computers, peripheral devices and cables, and anything else that will keep you organised. That way, a cluttered and disorganised home office will be a thing of the past and you’ll work much more effectively.