Decluttering Your Messy Home Office
Due to the recent pandemic, more than half of employed Americans have transitioned to working from home — at least, for the time being anyway. When working from home, having a home office or designated workspace is essential to staying productive and meeting deadlines. However, it is darn near impossible to be at all productive in a cluttered workspace.
Stacks of papers, random, tangled cords, and coffee mugs from who-knows-how-long-ago — there is nothing less motivating than trying to get work done in a home office that is flooded with clutter. In a perfect world, your home office should be just as functional as your traditional work office. The biggest challenge that many face, however, is keeping personal and household belongings from intruding on their workspace and the things you need to stay productive throughout the workweek. If this sounds all too familiar, good news! You can get started decluttering your home office today with these tips!
Declutter Your Home Office In 7 Simple Steps
1. Take It Section by Section
Even though your home office isn’t the biggest room in your home, trying to declutter and organize it all at once can quickly become overwhelming. You can still accomplish a lot when you take it slow. Start with one section of the office; you can start by organizing your desk area one day and then move onto the surrounding area the day after. While you don’t have to turn decluttering your messy office into one strenuous task, you should make sure to get this part done within reasonable time so your productivity doesn’t have to suffer anymore!
2. Only Keep What You Need
If you recently set up a home office on a whim in your spare room, chances are there are some things in there that you do not need. Experts recommend that your home office space has only the essentials you need to help eliminate potential distractions that could take away from your work. See if these things can be moved into your basement, attic, or garage. If not, it may be worth looking into storage solutions for these items, especially since it is hard to tell how long companies will allow employees to work from home — some have already shifted to giving employees the option to work remotely. If you don’t want to sacrifice even more productivity by bringing your things to a storage facility, consider pick-up and delivery storage services.
3. Make Your Documents Digital
If you’re someone who still relies heavily on paper documents, you know just how quickly they can stack up in your workspace. Now that you are working from home, there is no better time than now to digitize your documents. Thanks to technology advancements, almost all of your business documents — such as receipts, bills, invoices, and other miscellaneous sheets of paper — can be converted into digital files. As long as you can store these documents on a hard drive that can be frequently backed up, it’ll be just as safe as keeping paper copies, only with less clutter. If you have any documents that you want to keep, or documents that require having a physical copy, they can be put in a filing cabinet.
4. Thoroughly Clean and Dust
A messy office is, without a doubt a distraction. Before you continue organizing and putting things away, once you have a good portion of the clutter removed, make sure to dust, sweep, and thoroughly clean the surfaces in your home office. A fresh, clean workspace is proven to help boost productivity — certainly much more than a filthy one with stacks of random paperwork and stained coffee mugs would.
5. Label, Label, Label
Especially after working in your work office for so long, working in a new environment can make it difficult to know where you have put the items you need. A simple, tried-and-true solution is to make labels. While label-making seems like something up a scrapbooker’s alley, using labels to define where certain things are stored in your home office will make it significantly easier to find things during your workday without killing your momentum.
6. Put Everything Back Where It Belongs
As you were decluttering, chances are some things got moved around. Make sure that the essentials are placed back into their proper place. Make sure that the cords to your computer and other electronics are out of the way and free of tangles. This is the time to restore neat, orderly, and accessible fashion into your home office.
7. Don’t Let Clutter Reclaim Its Ground
As you know from working in a regular office, clutter can quickly build up due to all the hustle and bustle of the workweek, and at home it is often worse. Therefore, if you plan on continuing to work remotely in your home office, it may be worth getting in the habit of tidiness. Make sure to always put things back when you are done using them and take some time to tidy up at the end of each workday. If you feel like you need a more small-scale storage solution to keep things clutter-free, go for it! Just make sure you are considering the available space of your home office as well as its style and atmosphere.
All it takes is a little time, dedication, and elbow grease to declutter your messy home office. With a clean, clutter-free home office, it will not only be easier to work but you’ll genuinely be in a better mood while doing it.
Declutter Your Home Office With Door to Door Storage Solutions
If your home office needs some things cleared out, taking it all to a storage facility isn’t the best option in terms of being productive. To save time — and money — you can safely and securely store the items you have with Doorage’s door to door storage services. Similar to door-to-door movers, Doorage sends storage containers to your door. Once they are filled, the Doorage team will pick up your storage containers and bring them to their state-of-the-art storage facility. Eliminating the need to rent an entire unit at a storage facility, Doorage’s pickup and delivery storage services are a no-brainer!
