Remote working can be beneficial for many individuals. Working within the comforts of one’s home can bring a lot of advantages: one can just quickly grab a quick snack and doesn’t have to worry about commuting or getting stuck in traffic on the way to work. However, productivity might be compromised if an employee’s home office is poorly planned and highly disorganized.
Worry not. If you’re a professional currently working from home, this feature will help you out with what steps to undertake to help you organize your home office well. Besides having an office desk and chairs set maximize what your office can do for you and your work performance by following the steps below:
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Plan Out Your Home Office
Failing to plan is said to be akin to planning to fail.
To begin setting up a well-organized home office, you need to have a plan on hand. Scout your house for possible locations or rooms where you may set up your home office. Ensure that you can work on it with little to no distractions. Further, check if your equipment and furniture pieces will be a great fit for your selected workstation.
After picking out a certain spot in your home that’ll serve as your home office, create a short checklist that you’ll use in curating items that you need for your work desk – stationery, organizers, and others, order them beforehand online or visit a local store in your area.
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Create A Filing System
Creating a filing system is a precursor to a well-organized home office. It’d be beneficial, especially if your work deals with many paper documents. To prevent dealing with a messy work desk filled, it’s recommended that you arrange your paper documents in categories.
You can also assign colors for different paper types, so you have a way of identifying them, even just by looking at their labels. Categories may be financial, insurance, medical, and the like. You could also separate documents for shredding to avoid mixing them with important documentation.
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Build A Printing Station
Having a printing station ready in your home office is highly advised. Place your printer and scanner as well to your very own home office printing station. You can organize all the printing supplies in this area too. You could include folders, binders, and others to manage what you have printed. For a wire-free station, you can opt for a wireless printer that uses Wi-Fi or Bluetooth connection technology. Working on a cable-free workstation is believed to boost productivity.
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Use Containers
If you have plenty of work items with you, putting your items in a drawer isn’t enough. Storing your work items inside portable containers or bins before putting them inside a drawer would be helpful. It’s pleasing to the eye, and it helps you locate your items in a more organized way. As you use containers, you can separate your belongings by function and prevent them from mixing with one another.
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Add Labels
Most home offices consist of many boxes, cabinets, and even pedestals. Going through each one to locate a single object can be time-consuming.
Nonetheless, creating and putting labels on each receptacle is very advantageous. This helps you know the exact location of almost every item in your office. You can put these labels on the lids of the boxes or even the drawer doors. To proceed, you can print labels using a label printer or simply print them on paper and tape them on each box. Going for consistent font size and design would help for a unified look.
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Arrange Your Books
Ideally, you should have a bookshelf so your books would have a place to sit. There are a lot of ways and styles of arranging your books. You can put them by color, size, or genre. Some even recommend arranging books’ titles alphabetically.
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Maximize Wall Space
Most home offices consist of four walls, and it’s practical to utilize these. To lessen the number of items you have on your table or even your shelves, you can use the wall when hanging calendars, whiteboards, bulletin boards, and the like. Using the walls can save you a lot of table space which you can utilize for other meaningful purposes.
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Carry Out Cable Management
Cables everywhere are an eyesore indeed. For organization freaks, the sight of cables loosely hanging at the edge or underneath a table is enough to give them a debilitating headache. Additionally, there’s a tendency for people to trip on unorganized and loose wire cables.
Thus, managing your cables is one of the things that you should consider when organizing your home office. Not just does it look better for your eyes, but it also promotes a much safer working environment.
Takeaway
Organizing your at-home workstation is said to be essential to boosting productivity. This way, you know exactly wherever everything is, without worrying about any clutter. It’ll be refreshing to the eyes while also maximizing every minute you spend inside.
