The number of individuals working remotely increased by 115% over the years. These are just telecommuters; there’s another third of people identified as being self-employed. Most of them work from home and don’t require an office to stay creative.
However, if you’re someone who works at home, even at least for a portion of the time, note that your workplace can influence your productivity and creativity. To stay creative, generate ideas, and solve problems at work, you should take care of your working environment, especially if you work from home.
Below are 5 easy steps to organize your workplace at home.
#1: Purge Paper
Get control of the clutter before it makes a huge mess. Find every little piece of paper in your home office by using the Method of Three: Toss/shred it, file it, or take quick action from it. Remember to file your necessary paperwork in a decent color-coded filing system.
To organize, you can separate the filing system into 5 different color-coded categories:
- Red — Medical
- Green — Financial
- Yellow — Insurance
- Blue — House
- Orange — Personal
Label each hanging folder as per your preferences.
#2: Clear Your Message Board
Don’t forget the purpose of your workplace at home. We aren’t just decluttering, we are creating an environment that will help you be more productive.
There’s simply nothing wrong with having your family pictures displayed in your house—but your workplace is not the right place for them. Consider taking the photos down and moving them elsewhere. Clear old, unnecessary messages off the board and move on to the next step.
#3: Divide Your Home Office Into Separate Zones
When working from home, you have the opportunity to divide your office into two different zones:
- The Computer Zone—an ergonomic chair and a desk to spend most of your time.
- The Non-computer Zone—a corner for relaxation, inspiration, making notes, generating new strategies, communicating with clients, meditation, etc.
#4: Categorize
To learn how to detox your home office setup meticulously, you first need to understand how to organize the workplace into categories, meaning placing your necessary items together. By doing this, you’ll make your office even more functional. For instance, next time you need stamps, you can simply look in the mail drawer.
Here are some common categories:
- Tools—staple, straight cutter, hole puncher, staple remover, etc.
- Writing Tools—pens, markers, pencils, etc.
- Stickies—tabs, stickers, sticky notes, etc.
- Mail—stamps, envelopes, address labels, etc.
- Budget—calculator, checkbook, bill calendar, etc.
- Labeling—label tape and labeler.
#5: Create Life Binders
This step is often overlooked by most remote workers. Organize your essential papers in binders so you can easily access them for emergencies. For instance, if there’s a medical emergency, simply grab the medical binder and access all the information required immediately.
Below are some common binder categories.
- House—store the house-related data here (e.g., pest control, maintenance, contact numbers, security system, etc.)
- Medical—keep the medical records of your family members here.
- Auto—for car repairs, insurance papers, and maintenance records.
- Pet—the shot records, medical records, and medications of your pets.
- Manuals—store all the manuals in one place or separate the binder in sub-categories (e.g., electronics, appliances, house, and garden).
- Personal—anything that doesn’t fit in other categories or files goes here.
Wrapping Up
So, these are five easy steps you can take to organize your home office within a day.
Organize your desk drawers, master the filing system, go through the entire home office organizational makeover if you have to. Just make sure you’ve created an environment that inspires you to be creative and increases your productivity.
If you found this helpful, feel free to share your thoughts and recommendations with us in the comments below.
About the author: Kathrin Garner is an enthusiastic journalist and writes article on social issues. As an activist, she takes part in NCSM program, which is a discussion platform on the relevant cannabis topics. So, if you want to know how to detox from weed, feel free to contact her. Also, she is a volunteer at Marijuana Detox. She searches for current issues, and writes about it to a wide range of readers.
