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A Calm, Clutter-Free Home Office Environment Conducive To Work

The home office is often the foundation of the modern day family. Moms and Dads routinely use the home office to pay the bills, plan and coordinate schedules, appointments and calendars. Moms may organize recipe files and family photo albums. These tasks can all be done on our computers or on paper. 

It is actually becoming very popular for one or even both of the parents to work remotely from home. Moms have become very savvy with their social media and blogging skills. More people of all ages are taking advantage of creating their home businesses.

Here are some great ideas for possible work-at-home opportunities: blogging, affiliate marketing, direct selling, data entry, freelance writing, medical transcription, medical coding, customer service, proofreading, virtual assistant, bookkeeper and more. Many individuals are make a living from home. 

It is easy to understand with so many different activities happening in a home office, it can become the most disorganized and cluttered area in the house. So, if you are feeling overwhelmed and stressed from a messy, disorganized office it can be helpful to develop a plan for making your home office clutter-free and conducive to work. A clean organized desk and home office can help you save time and stress, especially if you work from home. 

An accumulation of mail may be the biggest contributing factor to cluttered desktops. Get in the habit of sorting through your mail on a daily basis. You can easily place those items that may need to be shredded into a shredding bin and routinely shred them once per week. File items away properly. Make sure that you keep your own filing system updated with folders for current years or months. 

It is a good idea to keep certain computer storage media, such as CDs and DVDs properly labeled and placed in a protective storage cases. You can even categorize them for easy access. 

If your home office area is commonly used by all family members, it can become cluttered with coffee mugs, snacks and even a few dirty dishes. Since computer equipment can easily be damaged should something spill on it, it’s probably smart to impose a rule about no eating and drinking while using the computer. 

If you spend a significant amount of time during the day in your home office and your office space is roomy enough, you could create an area far enough away from the computer and other electronic equipment where food and drinks could be set down without the fear of ruining equipment if a spill would occur. 

If you use a bulletin board, take the time to keep the items posted up-to-date. Make sure your calendar is always current so you can see the month’s scheduled activities and appointments. 

An over abundance of office supplies have a way of cluttering up a workspace as well. Make time to clean out and organize desk drawers if needed and make sure all office supplies have a home other than the top of your desk. 

With some good planning and ongoing maintenance, your home office can become an organized and productive workspace that you truly will enjoy everyday.

Planning Baby Steps For Getting Your Home Organized

You can increase your productivity dramatically by simply organizing your belongings in your home. I will describe important tools to help you when deciding on your goals to organize your life. 

The first major step is to create a plan. There is nothing that is more essential to achieving your goals than having a good plan. Often times, people set nonrealistic goals when first embarking on changing any area of their life.   

In order for your organizing plan to work successfully you need to have understandable, realistic goals that are individualized and written out. It is a good idea to set long and short-term goals. For example, your long-term goal could be getting your total home organized in one year's time. Your short-term goal could be getting one room in order within a month. 

After you have your goals defined, write them down on paper and put that paper in a place where you can view it often throughout the week. This should easily motivate you to achieve your goals.

Lastly, you need to determine why you want your house to be organized. It is helpful for you to know why you have this desire. 

While the above ideas may seem simplistic, it is amazing how many people set out to achieve positive changes in life without knowing what they specifically want to get done. The simplest and strongest force to achieving your goals is knowing where you are going and the reasons why you are going in that direction. Hopefully, if you follow these tips you will organize your life better than you ever thought possible.

What Area of Your House Needs Organization?

I would like you to think of what area of your house has been causing you the most frustration?

Some examples:

• Is it your cluttered kitchen or bathroom cabinets?
• Could it be your desk with piles of papers?
• Maybe your family room is not being used for it's fullest potential because clutter is taking up a lot of space.
• Can you relax in your bedroom area, or do you have disorganization with clothes and books lying around?
• Do you have unfolded clothes in laundry baskets sitting in your family room on the couch?
• Is it taking you too long to cook and prepare family meals because you can't find what you need inside of your disorganized, cluttered kitchen cabinets?
• Do you get frustrated just thinking about cleaning and maintaining the bathroom every week because you haven't figured out the appropriate storage for that area?
• Do you dislike walking into your basement because you have been storing so much of what you have accumulated throughout the years in boxes downstairs?
• Can you park your cars in your garage, or do you use that area to store extra boxes of items that you need to sort through?
• Does it look nice around the entrance of your front or back door, or do you have shoes, mail, magazines or pet supplies lying around?

I think you probably get the picture. I believe that you will begin to easily see a huge positive difference in even one small area in your home that you declutter. Hopefully, this will get you motivated to continue with your future home organizational plans!

After reading many of my examples, you may decide to start in the one area of your home that causes you the most frustration.

You will want to begin by planning your organizing or decluttering project.

Plan an appropriate amount of time for your individual projects. Four hours may be a great amount of time, but even if you have an hour or 30 minutes, you may accomplish a decent amount of work. 

After you become accustomed to decluttering and organizing your house, you may easily find that even 15 minutes a day may be helpful if you are busy.

Get your supplies ready such as: garbage bags, boxes for sorting, labels, etc. You will want to wait until you declutter to buy specific storage containers that you will need to use on a long-term basis.

It is helpful to decide in advance what you want to do with any items that you definitely decide to get rid of for sure. Some examples: local charity, local consignment store, junk removal service or a future yard sale. 

It is helpful to have items removed quickly after your organizing project is completed. It is always a good idea to completely finish one project before you begin another.

Remember to stick with one area that you are working on and do not jump into other rooms at the same time. Focus on one project at time to increase your efficiency.

Some people enjoy working with an accountable friend and they find that method to be motivating.

Others may have a need or desire to hire a Professional Organizer to help them develop specific organizing systems and storage solutions.

Here are a few stumbling blocks or excuses that people may commonly use when deciding on what to get rid of in their homes.

• People sometimes want to hold onto things because they think "they may need those items someday."  I am a strong believer that it actually becomes much easier and quicker to access items in your home after you get rid of what you don't use or want anymore.
• Many times, people just do not know what to keep, such as paperwork. I am planning on developing my Paper Management Workshop possibly in the future to discuss this separate topic. For now, here are a few examples of purposes for keeping paper: taxes, legal certificates/proof, property documents, legal agreements, receipts/claims.
• You may feel guilty about getting rid of an item that was given to you originally as a gift. However, it is important to remember that the "act of giving" is the factor involved. If you definitely do not like the item or need it, please don't feel guilty.
• We often save certain objects for sentimental reasons. An item may be associated with an familiar memory. You can decide to even take a picture of the object and keep that to help preserve the memory. One big excuse that people use to hold onto their "stuff" is because they paid decent money for an item. Please decide if the item is useful for your life today. You may decide to have a yard sale or even use a local consignment shop as an option.

Here are some excellent organizing principles for you.

• When you purchase a new item in a certain category, you may decide to donate or sell another item that you already have in that category. This is sometimes referred to as "the one in - one out" principle. So, you won't have a tendency to accumulate too much again in the future.
• Before you decide to buy a new item for your home, try to visualize where it will " live" or be placed in your home. If you can't figure that out, it may be better to hold off on the purchase at this time, if possible. 
• Buy containers after you declutter, so you know exactly how many you will need and the correct sizes.
• You can label your containers with name of the contents, so you and your family will be able to quickly find your items when needed.
• Focus on one specific area when you are organizing your home. If you happen to find certain items that belong in another room, you can collect them in a separate box and put them back where they belong when you are finished with your organizing project. This will save you some time and keep you from getting distracted.
• Finally, make sure you have a maintenance plan to keep your house organized.