Organizing a Home Office

If the kitchen is the heart of the home, the home office is the information center of your home. Does your home office work efficiently? Can you find what you need? Do you enjoy spending time in the space? Let's focus on what you need to bring order to your space: furniture, an effective filing system and storage for supplies.

An effective workspace should have a stable surface (a desk if possible, but it can be the kitchen counter or a folding card table), a chair, file storage (a file cabinet or a file box), and supply storage.

Arrange the furniture in your space so that you can reach your most used items easily when you are sitting in your desk chair. If things like your desk supplies or file cabinet are too far away, you are more likely to postpone putting items away. If you can reach everything, you will have simplified tasks to one step instead of two, and you'll save time.

On your work surface you should designate a place where papers land when they come into the office and a place where out going papers wait to be delivered to another area of your home or out of the house. Then sort your paperwork into categories such as to pay, to file, to call, errands, waiting for a response and to read. Sort your papers into tasks that apply to you. If there is no action needed on an item, it probably means you should toss or recycle that paper.

Paperwork, which you want to keep, needs to be filed. There are several ways to set up an effective filing system. The trick is to set up a system that you will use. Make it as easy as possible, and have it make sense for you.

The final thing you need in your office space is storage. Your desk should have drawers for your most used supplies. Adding dividers to the drawers will guaranty it doesn't become a junk drawer. Also necessary for most home offices is some storage space to hold large items like extra paper, folders, and computer supplies.

Set up your office so it makes your work easier. You should not feel as though you have to work to keep you office running smoothly.