An office can be a sanctuary, or it can be an overwhelming chaos that weighs you down. How can we make it more like a sanctuary? It needs to be organized! The biggest impact to keeping an organized office is having a place for everything so that everything can be put away into its place instead of floating around and collecting in piles. Keeping flat surfaces as clear as possible is also key – that way, you have room to move around and actually use your office space. Let’s take a closer look at how we can achieve that.
I prefer everything to be out of sight, so we have cabinets where things are organized. For example, a medium cabinet next to the desks contains several plastic drawer sets where small random items go, such as super glue, Box Tops for the school, extra printer paper, papers and receipts that need to be shredded, and backup lanyards. I have the drawers to organize receipts and the next batch of papers to shred. It’s also where my husband keeps his messenger bag and where I keep my slippers, and we have a hook on the side for my grade schooler to hang his backpack.
On the other side of the desk, we have another cabinet with several small drawers and a larger drawer for files. One of the drawers in that cabinet serves as an inbox for files that require an action at a later date or need to be digitized. Otherwise, actionable files are kept on the desk until they are dealt with, which is usually same or next day because I don’t like papers laying around. I also like office supplies organized with bins and dividers so that everything has its own place and things don’t shift around.
Speaking of papers, find a place for all those items that come into the house and require an action, such as bills to pay, school pictures to purchase, coupons to use, etc. You can use a drawer, bin, magazine holder, hanging wall file, or shelves.
My son has a mini-hutch so we put his homework, markers and pencils box, and notebooks on the shelves, and his tablet slides under the shelves when not in use.
If you have electronics in your office, it’s important to keep the cables contained. There are many ways to keep cables organized and it depends on the furniture you have, where your electronics are, and how permanent your cabling is. My laptop cables are constantly being moved because I work on them in other places sometimes, so I need a system where I can remove the power cables and store them again. We liked these because they can be flexible in their use. It’s not picture perfect when looking closely, but it makes a huge difference when looking at the desks from eye level because everything is hidden right under the desks. Also, notice the TV cable coming out of the “tunnel” that runs behind the wall and hides the cables. If you look at the picture above of all the computers together, you will notice that there are no cables running down from the TV because the power is plugged in right behind it and the Ethernet cable runs through the tunnel. It makes everything look really nice and neat.
You can find more tips for organizing and decluttering your home in my book Minimalism for Everyone: Balanced Simplicity.
