Keeping your workspace clean is essential if you work from home full-time, go back to the office, or have a busy schedule. Clutter piles distract you, causing you to lose focus, time, and potentially vital information. Even if you’ve gone all digital with your data, your supplies must be immediately available so that you can call your boss’s schedule for that last-minute Zoom.
Balancing job and household management is a difficult chore in and of itself, so why not make it as simple as possible for yourself? Clutter in the workplace often raises tension, impairs concentration, and encourages procrastination. Use the following tips to clear your desk of clutter, so you can spend less time at work and have a good balance between work and life.
Every Day, Clean Your Desk
Making your bed each morning is a tremendous daily organizational tip. It not only makes your entire bedroom look cleaner, but it also sets a productive tone. Consider how vital it is to clean your desk at the end of the day. Before logging off, remove all superfluous clutter or trash and arrange supplies and notes in their proper locations so you can start the next day with a clean slate.
Increase Electronic Storage
Each year, we require more technology to do our tasks. Rather than battling it, embrace technology by devising ingenious ways to make things more structured. Consider using a headphone or tablet stand to keep things within reach and upright. Keep your cords and cables organized to avoid a tangle of wires in and around your workstation.
Support Your Monitor
An elevated computer monitor, or even a laptop, benefits your posture by aligning the screen with your eyes. Many risers also come with storage. While not in use, tuck your keyboard and mouse beneath it. To store supplies or stack notepads, use small cubbies or drawers.
Install a Pegboard
A pegboard can be your best pick for an orderly workstation if you’re a visual person. Hang all your supplies using customizable hooks to keep your workstation neat. Attach a tiny shelf and put bulkier goods, such as notebooks and pads, between bookends. To keep writing supplies within easy reach, you can hang a few buckets along the bottom.
Customize Office Storage
Consider adding built-in shelves above your workstation or relocating a bookcase near your desk to optimize space. If more than one person uses the room, ensure the surface area is large enough to accommodate at least two seats and designate various zones or cubbies for each person. Utilize the surrounding walls to hang file organizers that can be labeled so that everyone knows where to find critical paperwork.
Make the Most of Your Space
Choose upper cabinets with a mix of closed and open shelves to provide easy-access storage for frequently used office products. Slip bins into unused corners; they’ll be close but separate from your main work surface.
Clutter Control
Here’s a quick method to clear stuff off your desk while keeping them easily accessible. Put similar goods in baskets, containers, or boxes and mark them so everything is clear about where something is—binders in one and office supplies in another. A desk with open shelves is ideal for storing containers.
You may need more space for a desk and work at the kitchen or dining room table. Please set up a three-tier rolling cart with all the office supplies you’ll need for your profession and bring it to the table while you work. After the day, slide it out of sight so you’re ready for the next.
Maintain Like with Like
Include a tray with sections for paper clips, pencils, and rubber bands, and keeps small, loose items in one corner of your desktop or desk drawer contained. Meanwhile, the open containers allow you to quickly grab what you need and restore things to their proper locations.
Make It Yours
Repurpose old furniture, such as a cabinet or antique desk, as your workspace. Refinish it to breathe fresh life into the piece and paint it in your favorite color.
Choose Storage-Friendly Furniture
When choosing workstations or furniture for your workspace, prioritize items that offer ample storage options. Look for desks with shallow drawers for your supplies, seats with built-in file cabinets, or printer stands with paper cabinets. These features will help keep your workspace organized and clutter-free. The more storage alternatives you provide, your desktop will likely remain clear. It is helpful to put things away at the end of each day.
Transparent organizers are a popular choice for desk storage for a reason. The ability to look directly through the containers eliminates the need to guess what’s inside.
Maintain Simplicity
A single craft table may be all you need to complete your tasks. Provide two clear containers for writing implements and a bulletin board on the wall above to pin reminders. If you’re a natural minimalist, there’s no need to overcomplicate your workspace.
Keep Your Files to a Minimum
For a good reason, paperless filing solutions have become the norm. But most of us still have a few pieces of paper, even if it’s only the mail. Choose a top-mounted organizer if you don’t need a filing cabinet on or near your desk. To make labels easier to read, choose a vertical layout.
Incorporate Into Your Residence
Keep your workstation in a high-traffic area, like the living room or kitchen, as tidy as possible. To blend in with your home’s decor, coordinate organizers, supplies, and even your office chair. Make it a practice to clean it at the end of each workday so you may relax in your downtime without any visual clutter in plain sight.
Store Items High and Far Away
Using or installing above-closed cabinets will free your workplace from debris, big or tiny, and is especially useful for items you don’t use very often but want to have close at hand when you do. It can include a printer that you only use a few times a year, freeing up space on or beneath your desk.
Climb the Wall
In a small workplace, use a track or shelving system to create a desk with storage. The advantage of this system is that you can arrange the shelves wherever you like and add to them as needed. You’ll optimize vertical space and clean the desk of stuff while keeping them within reach by utilizing the wall.
Maintain Organization in Drawers
Desk drawers can quickly become cluttered if organizers are not used to segregating items. If the drawers are deep enough, use spring-loaded dividers or shallow organizational inserts to separate staples from scissors. Use labels inside the drawers to ensure you always remember where to find or replace your office supplies.
Stay Focused on the Little Details
Provide a temporary home for reading glasses while keeping day planners and journals visible. Look for a desktop organizer designed to hold the items you need regularly. Place paper clips and postal stamps in tiny drawers and sticky notes in the center.
Before settling on a desk, plan and inventory everything you need to store for business or household management and will ensure you have enough space to store your belongings (preferably with room to grow). This drop-front secretary hutch organizes supplies while still providing plenty of desk space.
Enhance Your Aesthetic with Function
Just because your desk is all about work doesn’t mean it has to be uninteresting. Hang a rustic board with linked baskets above it to add elegance and function. Keep your desk area cleaner by storing materials and stationery in the baskets.
Drawers Compartmentalized
Measure your desk drawer’s depth, breadth, and height, then choose an organizing tray that suits the depth, width, and size. If you have a drawer that is particularly wide, it may be beneficial to consider purchasing an expandable one. Then, sort supplies by kind using separate compartments. Having a place to keep your belongings inside the desk will keep piles from accumulating on top of it.
Make Some Room
A large desk may not be practical if you use a corner of the dining room, guest bedroom, or another similar space as your home office. Look for a wall-mounted fold-down desk that serves two functions. For starters, it only provides you with a desktop surface when you require it. And two, it can hide clutter by storing your supplies around the clock.