What's cool about working from home? The home office helps you to designate a workspace and pick a schedule that suits you! However, being productive is always challenging, and the common culprit of demotivation is clutter. So it is essential to organise your home office. An organised home office helps reduce stress, increase productivity, leave you with more spare time, and frees your mind. Here are some effective tips and tricks to organise your home office.
12 ways to organise your home office
If you're working from home and are struggling to get your work done, we've provided ten home office organising suggestions you should test:
Designate work zone
It is easy to get distracted while working from your home. Therefore, you should create a specific work zone to improve your efficiency. Choose a quiet area in your home where you can work for long hours. Making sure that you can close the door in that space. It will allow you to avoid the distractions that can significantly impact your focus and productivity.
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Let the natural light in
Create your workspace in a location where enough natural light can enter. Light can increase your productivity and motivation. If you spend most of the day in the dark, it can make you bored and sick. According to research conducted by Harward, sunlight can reduce headaches and drowsiness to 63 percent and 56 percent. If you're energised and do not have headaches to contend with, you'll be more productive.
Keep a shelf and other organising tools
Organise everything in your office. It is a waste of time, if you need to search your desk, or get up to reach your filing cabinet to find the supplies you frequently use. Although your workspace appears quite tidy initially, it will not remain the same for long. Each time you take out the item you require and put it back on the desk, you'll add more clutter.
Always keep your most valuable tools nearby. You can use a variety of tools for organising your office, such as:
- A shelf or bookcase can be a great way to organise the space of your home-office. Install an item on a shelf in front of or next to your desk to keep your calendar, dictionary and other books that you regularly use.
- Set up a file holder on your desk to keep the files you need for ongoing tasks.
- A mailbox is a place to organise your bills, assignments, letters, and other tasks on your list of things to do.
- A rack to store files for the current projects.
- A trash can, recycling container, and shredder.
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Sweep your desk clean
As you'll spend the most time at your desk, you need to get your desk organised! Begin with a clean blank slate. Remove everything from your desk except your printer, computer and phone.
If the desk you are looking at has accumulated a few years of dust, it's a good occasion to tidy your desk and sweep under it.
Get a locked cabinet
Purchasing a filing cabinet is a fantastic method to create space in your home-office. Purchasing a fireproof storage unit with a lock system ensures that your documents will not be stolen or damaged. A fireproof, locked container is vital for crucial documents such as birth certificates, marriage certificates, passports, and car titles. They can also be kept in the safe deposit box. To make the most of the storage space, you can get an office cabinet with four drawers.
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Declutter and relocate items
The home offices often become messy because the owners aren't willing or make an effort to throw items away or relocate personal things. For instance, your baby’s photo may keep you happy, but it takes up valuable desk space. Remove everything not directly connected to the work you do from your desk.
Spend a few minutes to declutter the things you don't use.
Here are some items you should throw away:
-Pens that are no longer working
-Broken or unused office equipment such as old computers, phones and scanners and printers (you can reuse many of these items)
-Documents that are out of date and no longer required
-Old magazines, newspapers, Internet print-outs: when you've finished reading them or have done with them, you should stop using them
- Photos, greeting cards, awards, plants, coffee mugs, and souvenirs. However, you may still have some of these in your office but in a less remote location.
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Cable Clutter
Do you stumble across the tangled mess of cables and wires whenever you walk into your home-office? The presence of too many cables beneath your feet can make you stumble. It can also pose a fire risk and create a workplace that is much more cluttered than it is.
Here are some tips to minimise the number of cables in your home-office zone,
- Remove electronic devices that you do not use anymore or occasionally use.
- Utilise the most wireless devices possible -- such as your keyboard, mouse and printer.
- Get a USB hub that can connect multiple devices to your computer with only one USB cable.
Move office equipment off your desk
If your desk is covered with monitors, printers and computers, phones, modems, phones and computer storage, where will you work? It's not necessary to have these gadgets over your desk. They are taking up valuable space.
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Here are some suggestions to get rid of some technology from your workspace:
-Place your desktop computer's CPU beneath the desk or on the floor.
-Huge monitor can take nearly half the size of your desk. You can replace it with a slick monitor.
-Back up everything online. This online backup can save you if your hard drive fails or your laptop computer is stolen or damaged. However, it will allow you to remove the extra storage device off your desk.
Digital calendar and to-do lists
How do you track your appointments, meetings or other commitments? Do you use a notepad Day Timer that's brimming with notes? Have you migrated your calendar to digital, but you still use notepads to keep track of deadlines and important dates?
Choose a system you're sure to keep. You can eliminate paper and save all your important reminders onto the back of your iPhone or other personal devices. The documents include deadlines, meetings, appointments, to-do lists and appointments. Connect your calendar on your device to your computer so that you're always aware of where you're supposed to be.
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Organise Your PC
The filing cabinets and desk aren't the only things in your office that require clearing. Computers can also benefit from a thorough cleaning. If you continue to load documents and programs on your hard drive, eventually, it'll become too cluttered that it's impossible to locate what you require or find yourself running out of space.
Here are a few suggestions to organise your computer:
-Set up your filing system. Make the folders in a manner that is logical to you.
-Throw away old documents.
-Back up your files to ensure you don't lose any needed data, and back up all of your important data via an external drive or internet storage services.
-Sort your email. Your inbox for email can be similar to your desk when you don't have an organised plan. Create folders to organise your messages according to subject, sender, or dates.
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Utilise vertical space
Utilising vertical space gives you additional space to keep your home-office zone especially desk area tidy and organised. This system is particularly true when you have smaller desk space or no drawers at the desk. The space over your desk could be the ideal spot to put your essential things. The vertical or floating shelves can also give the space an impression of art.
Invest in the comfort
Few people consider comfort when selecting tables, chairs, and work desks to use in their office at home. You can’t stay productive when you're suffering from neck or eye strain while working. A poor ergonomics system can affect your productivity over the long term. As you will spend most of your time working from your home office, be cautious about comfort. While organising your home-office, purchase comfortable furniture.
Bottom Line
The pandemic has taught the whole world about the efficiency of the work-from-home trend. However, not all people can enjoy the facility of a remote office as their workspaces may not be very inspiring. A well-organised home office can make you more creative and productive. So far, we have discussed useful methods to organise your home office. Hope it helps!
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