In this week’s Home Office Organization Challenge I give step by step instructions for getting this area of your home organized so you can get your household paperwork done efficiently, and without the need to search everywhere for what you need.

Home Office Organization

Depending on the size and layout of your home you may or may not have an entire room devoted to dealing with your household’s business.

However, no matter whether you have large amounts of space in your home office, or just use a little nook in your kitchen, or even the kitchen or dining room table for your workspace, you’re not off the hook with this challenge.

Of course, if you’ve just got a small space and you’ve already created your home mail organizer center from Challenge #10, you’ve already got a lot of the work done to get your entire home office area organized and ready for your household paperwork.

Further, this article will not discuss in detail one of the major parts of organizing your home office, which includes organizing files into a home filing system, since we did that already as part of the 52 Week Organized Home Challenge.

Finally, before jumping into the steps for this Challenge, keep in mind that if you operate a home-based business, or work out of your home, your home office organization scheme will need to be more involved, and tailored to your business needs so you will need to tweak the ideas below to suit your needs.

Step 1: Designate Space For Your Home Office And Declutter It

The first step in the Home Office Organization Challenge is to make sure you’ve got a place in your home ready for you to work on household business, and that it is decluttered of stuff not related to this purpose.

Every home needs a designated area to do the household business, from sorting mail, paying bills, making phone calls, and filing important documents. Preferably this area has a flat work space where you can spread your paperwork out, at least temporarily.

If you don’t yet have such an area in your home, look around and see where you can create one. (Hint – just expand the area you already designated to deal with your mail in a previous challenge if you need to!)

If you choose a room which has a couple of uses, such as also serving as a guest bedroom, for example, that can be perfectly fine. Just take a few minutes to think about all the functions of the room, and make sure you’re giving adequate space to the home office components of the room, and not crowding them out.

Further, to the extent that you’ve not already reduced the paper clutter in this room in the last few challenges, or there is non-paper clutter in the area you’re designating as your home office, take some time to clear it out.

Make sure to consolidate all paperwork and other items that should be in your home office into this one area, instead of scattered all over the house.

Similarly, don’t allow your home office to be your dumping ground for all the stuff you don’t have a designated space for in your home, and don’t know what to do with.

Remember that if you work from home, you need to be even more serious about having a designated area to get that work done, that is separated from the rest of the activity in your home. Even if you can’t create a whole room you’ll be amazed at what just a simple decorative screen or room divider can do to give you the mental ability to focus on work when you need to.

Equipment Every Home Office Needs

At a minimum here’s the equipment that should be able to fit into your home office area:

• Good sized flat surface to work (preferably a desk)
• Confortable chair
• File cabinet or other storage solutions to hold your files
• Office equipment, such as computer, printer, telephone (scanner and fax if needed)
• Small home shredder
• Recycling container for paper

Step 2: Organize And Clear Off Your Desk Or Flat Work Space

The second step toward home office organization is to clear off extraneous stuff from your desk or other work space. Your goal should be to only have things on your desktop that you use daily – everything else should be stored elsewhere, such as in a drawer or file cabinet.

I know that may seem rather extreme, but there is a profound pyschological relationship between having a clear desk and being able to focus and get your work done. Since one of the goals of home office organization is to save time, getting and keeping a clear desk is key to the process.

First, completely clear off your desk and wipe it down to remove dust bunnies. Next, since your computer and accompanying office equipment take up a lot of the room on your desk set these items up next. Then, add other items you use often such as in and out boxes, and other supplies you use often.

If you have trouble fitting everything necessary onto your desk you may need either a larger desk, or to employ some of the other home office storage solutions I’ll discuss more below in Step 4 of the Home Office Organization Challenge.

To the extent you’ve got lots of electronic office equipment be mindful of keeping your cords organized and untangled too. I’m personally a big fan of Command Strip products, since they hold well and are easy to install and later remove if needed, and they’ve got a cable organizer clips from this brand (shown in action in the picture to the left) that you can use, if needed.

Next, after working on your desktop, clear out your desk drawers, removing clutter and re-organizing the home office supplies and equipment contained in them.

As you know, many of these supplies (discussed in more detail below) are small, so I recommend getting some type of desk drawer organizer to keep everything compartmentalized and ready for use when needed.

Finally, start to make a habit out of cleaning up your work space at the end of your work sessions, to keep your desk clear from now on. The extra couple of minutes of effort used to put away supplies, file documents, and otherwise right the space will go a long way to keeping clutter and disorganization at bay in your home office from now on.

Step 3: Organize Home Office Supplies And Equipment

The next step in the Home Office Organization Challenge is to gather all of your home office supplies into one place, and declutter them, and then organize what you’ve got left.

For people with school age children at home I suggest also gathering the school supplies together with the office supplies, since often these supplies overlap.

One of the biggest mistakes I made for years when trying to organize my own home office was trying to keep all of my office supplies in my desk drawer. It made the drawer crammed with stuff, which made it look and feel disorganized.

That’s why I now suggest only keeping a small amount of each type of office supplies in your desk for immediate use, and keeping a larger supply of them in a designated box or basket that you store in a closet or file drawer to dip into periodically to restock your desk supplies.

If you want to get super organized with it, you can also create a home office suppliesrestock or reorder list to remind yourself of the usual supplies you use, and make sure you’ve got them on hand at all times.

Make it a habit to check your supplies once every couple of weeks, at a minimum, to make sure you’ve got everything you need, or add it to your shopping list for the week if not.

Step 4: Choose The Right Home Office Storage Solutions

The final step in the Home Office Organization Challenge is to make the best use out of the space you’ve got for your home office with the right types of storage solutions.

You don’t need to rush out and buy all these things to have an organized home office, nor should you. Every space is unique, so creative thinking is important in utilizing space efficiently. However, these are just ideas to help you fit the items you need into the space you’ve got available for your supplies and equipment:

Using high wall space is a great way to create storage space for books, notebooks, binders, or other supplies without taking additional floorspace in a room. One simple way to do this is to use a hutch or desktop organizer, such as the items shown, which mounts to the wall or sits on the desk to accomplish this.

Of course, if you have room, bookcases can also be helpful. Just make sure you consider what you want to store on the shelves to decide if you want deep or shallow shelves.

Further, rolling printer stands and rolling file carts can be a good way to make use of tight space by easily moving equipment and supplies you need in and out of place, as required by the circumstances. Some even are designed to roll under your desk to keep them out of the way while you’re not working there.