How to Declutter Your Home Office

While so many of us still working from home, dealing with office clutter can be a real problem, especially for those who have to rifle through paperwork and battle with multiple sticky notes every day. If you’ve been struggling to organise your desk and stay on top of the daily workflow, We Buy Any Home have got some helpful tips!

How to Declutter Your Home Office

1. Go paperless

The majority of workplace clutter is in the form of physical documents, notepads, and other bits of stationary. By going paperless, you’ll limit the amount of clutter that needs to sit on your desk, immediately reducing the mess that you’ll be working with.

There are multiple options if you’re looking to go paperless, but the best approach is to use worktop apps like Trello or OneNote. This will allow you to organise everything that you need to access easily, similar to a notepad, without the hassle of flicking through and having bits of paper all over the desk.

2. Only have out what you need

A big part of desks getting overrun with stuff is having things that you don’t use regularly out that just get in the way. Think rulers, hole punches, or even coloured pencils – items that are in most offices that rarely get used.

If you’ve got desk drawers, use them and put anything that usually lives on the desk in them to give yourself plenty of space to work. This will keep the surface clear while allowing you to easily access them should you need to use it. For those who don’t have desk drawers, or who do but they’re already full with other stuff, you can get a desk organiser in most shops for a cheap price which will let you organise your things more tidily and stop them becoming a distraction.

3. File things properly

Whether your documents are physical or virtual, having them badly organised is an immediate way to stress yourself and get overwhelmed while you have to search through them mid-meeting. When you’ve got some time, organise your files either into a tidy physical folder, or create online files that you can easily add relevant documents into.

By having your documents organised properly, you’ll easily be able to find things without the hassle of looking through multiples until you find the information that you’re looking for. You’ll likely find a lot of outdated material that you no longer need too, so you can get rid of this to make things even more organised.

4. Keep it clean

Even if you have a near-empty desk, you’ll quickly notice dust building up on it, so take some time to regularly give it a wipe down to avoid this. You might not think that this is a big distraction, but the majority of us while working at home, end up just doing little household chores here and there, which ultimately result in being a big distraction.

Keeping your desk clean will make sure that you don’t start tidying it during your work hours, as well as helping you stay more productive. Working in a messy area makes you more likely to get distracted, so keeping on top of it will reduce the risk of you getting caught up in a cleaning frenzy when you’re working.

5. Stay on top of it

All of these tips are great, but if you only do them once and then go back to those old ways, it will be pointless doing them in the first place. Make sure that you maintain what you’ve done, so your desk stays organised, and you’ve got the best space possible for your working hours.

It can be good to make a routine of your decluttering – clear your desk at the end of every day, for example, so it’s clean and ready for you the next morning when you start again or organise your files each week to keep up to date and make sure that everything is where it needs to be.

Spending some time organising your workspace will make a big difference and help you stay much more productive!

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