Organizing the Home Office
A cluttered home office doesn’t just look messy—it drains your focus, slows your workflow, and adds stress you don’t need. For some it is a low priority catchall space but if you work from home it would be extremely helpful to focus on this space. I personally can accomplish nothing workwise until my office is in good shape. Since it does tend to be a room where we put things to get them out of the way, I address it every week. Staying on top of it surely helps, however, if you are reading this you likely probably need to first get it to a maintainable place. As with all of the spaces we have discussed, the process starts with the basics which you can find on our website by clicking HERE.
There are some things which are particular to a home office. The biggest being paper! It seems like younger people don’t have much of a problem with this but those of us over 40 still tend to have quite a bit. When we are helping a client we typically tackle the non-paper items first and then phase two of the project will be paper. Once we have put it off as long as we can we begin by sorting each paper into Trash/recycling, Shred, Archive, Active and To Do. This needs to be done for paper in piles but also papers that may already be sorted into a filing system.
Trash/recycling will be primarily junk mail, old bills without account numbers, store receipts (unless it is an item you may return or is under warranty), old newsletters, expired coupons, out of date magazines, etc. If papers and mail have been accumulating for a long time, most of the paper you encounter will belong in this category. If you are feeling discouraged and need a quick win, simply pulling out the obvious trash can make you feel like you are making some quick progress.
Shred is of course the papers you don’t want to keep but contain sensitive information: normally anything with an account number or social security number. Many times old documents you pull from a filing system will fall into this category. There are many guides online to help determine if a document needs to be kept or not. Click HERE for example of a PDF that is easily printable. Once you have gathered the shred documents you can shred them yourself or take them somewhere like the UPS store or Staples. There are also companies that will come to your house to do the shredding.
Archive would be papers that we need to keep, at least for the time being, but not things we necessarily need to refer to often. Papers such as, auto insurance policies, property tax receipts, Income tax returns, medical records you would like to keep would be in this category. We normally incorporate these into an existing filing system or set up a new system. It is hard to beat a traditional filing cabinet for this but have also used file boxes, binders or whatever will work best for the client.
Active would be papers that don’t necessarily need to be kept long term but you do need to refer to fairly often. Examples of this would be school calendars, sports schedules, event tickets, upcoming trip documents, etc. How you store these is dependent on your preferences but I like to use a binder with slash pockets for my active documents. A pocket for each family member and general categories keeps them organized.
To Do’s would be the documents that need immediate attention. Sometimes if papers have been building up for a while there are things that can be pretty urgent. Once they are taken care of they can move into the other categories but we want to address what we need to first.
After all back papers have been gone through and organized it is important to set up some systems and establish some habits to keep it from building up again. There are so many ways to do that and we want to make sure we set up something that will work for the individual. We try to take into account existing habits, preferences, and aesthetics so that the system lasts and is not cluttered looking.
Paper seems to be a stumbling block for many of our clients. Part of the reason is that we can spend a lot of time on it, but not see an immediate, satisfying difference. However it is one that can make a big difference in mental focus and stress levels. If you have a home office that is overflowing with paper, we would be glad to help!
