The reality is that if you want to be productive in your home office then you absolutely can’t let it become cluttered. A cluttered office is just counterproductive because you will find yourself constantly being distracted by what’s in your environment and worse than that you will struggle to find the things you need when you need them, resulting in you wasting a ton of time and effort. Well, now that we’ve established the negatives of having a cluttered office (I don’t think there are any positive to be honest), I’m going to get right into sharing the steps you need to implement to completely transform your office and declutter it of all its mess.
Decluttering Home Office
Step 1: Tackle One Area at a Time
You might feel really overwhelmed when you look at your cluttered office, thinking how on earth are you going to be able to organize everything. But there is no reason to be overwhelmed, the solution is very simple. All you have to do is break the massive job into smaller parts. Just divide the office into different sections and declutter one section at a time. If you do this then you will literally find that decluttering and organizing your office will become a walk in the park.
Step 2: Get Rid of Things You Don’t Use
If you’ve had your home office for a while now, you’ve probably accumulated a lot of things that don’t even belong there. What you need to do is go through every single part of your office and put everything that you find that doesn’t belong in your office and put it all in a box. Once you’ve done that you need to take each of these items, one at a time and put them back where they belong. So if you take something out of the box and it belongs in the kitchen, then put it in the kitchen etc, until you have put every last thing that was in the box back in the place it belongs.
Step 3: Get Organized With Storage
If you find that no matter how many times you organize and declutter your office that it gets back into the same state it was before very quickly, then it might be the case you need to organize all the things that you have in your office by getting appropriate storage. This simply means buying things such as filing cabinets etc to put everything away in the appropriate place. Implement this step and you’ll find that you will no longer have your things just be all over the place.
Step 4: Get Digital
It’s 2019, the days of having stacks of paper files are over. You need to get with the times and get all your paper files into digital format. That means you need to take all the physical files such as receipts, important documents, bills and any other files you may have and scan them into your computer. Once these important files are safe and secure in a digital format then you can have the great pleasure of throwing away all that paper and as a result you will have a ton of new space in your office!
Step 5: Pile Things Up
If you’re really confused as to where you should begin with organizing all the things in your office then you can implement a very simple strategy which involves putting your things into different piles. One pile could be for all the things that you want to throw away, another could be for the things you want to keep in your office, another could be a pile for all the things you want to sell or give to someone else etc. Once you have these different piles it will make your life a lot easier because now you will know what to do with each pile, one item at a time.
Step 6: What to do With Documents You Don’t Use Anymore?
You might find that there are a lot of documents that you don’t have a need for right now but you still have to keep such as tax records. Yes, a lot of these files can be made digital but even so you will find there are a lot of documents that you still need a physical copy of. Well, the solution again is very simple. You just need to take all these files (which won’t be many), put them all in one folder and store it your garage or attic. As you aren’t going to be needing these files on a day to day basis you don’t really need them taking up space in your office.
Step 7: Clean it ALL Up
Alright, so by now if you’ve followed the above steps your office space will be pretty much free from all the clutter you had accumulated over the years. Well, the next step is to actually clean up and wipe away all of the dust etc. Once your office space is super clean you are going to feel a million times better and actually enjoy coming into the office every single morning to get to work!
Step 8: Don’t Go Back to Your Old Ways!
The reality is that you don’t just end up with a cluttered office overnight. It’s a process that happens over a period of time. So if you’ve implemented the steps that I’ve shared above and you now have a beautiful and clean office space, I’m sure you’re going to want to keep it that way. Well, in order to do that you are going to actually have to do a few things on a regular basis. These include always making sure that any item that you use in your office is put back where it was in the first place after you are done with it. Also at the end of each day before you leave the office you should tidy up the office and make sure that it is nice and clean for the next day.
If you are able to do this then your office will be clutter free forever… and the result of course will be increased productivity and happiness simply because you’ll be in an environment that you love!
