5 Steps to Organize Your Home  Office

As is the case with many people, you may work from home some or all of the time. If that is the case, you need a home office or designated workspace to ensure that you are able to productively undertake your professional activities. With this is in mind, there are five steps to consider as a means of ensuring that your home office is appropriately organized.

Get Adequate Furniture

The first step you need to take to ensure a well-organized home office is to obtain adequate, appropriate furniture. Many people attempt to cut corners when setting up a home office by skimping on office furnishings. While you don’t need to be extravagant, you do need to make sure that you furnish a home office with all off the basics.

You need to make certain that you obtain furniture that provides adequate space for your computer and associated equipment, for frequently used supplies and other items, and plenty of space for you to actually work.

Establish Activity Centers

The next step to consider in organizing an efficient home office is to create what best can be called activity centers. A typical home office can consist of a trio of activity centers.

The primary activity center in a home office is the work center. The work space comes complete with a clear workspace, like a desk or table that is left uncluttered. The workspace center also must have room for a computer and frequently used supplies as well as other types of equipment.

The second primary activity in a home office is a reference center in many cases. The reference center contains those items associated with your business or professional efforts that you rely upon. These items include:

• manuals
• binders
• professional books
• other professional materials

The final activity center in a home office is the supply area. This can be something as simple as a closet that can be used to stow such items as office supplies.

Create a Paper Processing Zone

Although a great deal of what you need to tend to in your business or professional life will be in digital form, if you are like most people who work from home you will still be dealing with paper and hard copies of items. Thus, you best organize your home office by establishing a paper zone.

The paper zone itself can be divided into three areas:

• papers and documents that need immediate attention
• papers and documents associated with long term projects or items you need to access regularly
• permanent filing system you need to maintain or don’t need to reference often

Regularly Eliminate Clutter

An organizational practice you need to implement or your home office is to regularly eliminate clutter and dispose of items that you no longer need. Time and again people who work from home offices end up buried in their own clutter and unneeded materials. The accumulation of clutter can seriously negatively impact efficiency. It also makes the home office a less enjoyable work environment.

Keep Your Home Office for Work Only

Another step you need to take to maintain order in your home office is to keep the space for professional purposes only. By keeping the space dedicated to work only you avoid other things and people invading the space. This ensures that extraneous things and people will not negatively impact your professional tasks and undertakings.

By taking these steps, you will be able to create and maintain an ideal home office. You will be able to be productive, effective, and efficient in undertaking your professional tasks and responsibilities in your home office.

Jessica is a professional blogger who writes for Faxage, a leading company that provide Internet fax service services for individuals and businesses.