Four ‘Organize Your Home Office Day’ Productivity Boosters
Organize Your Home Office Day comes but once a year…even though it’s something we should probably do on a quarterly (or maybe even monthly or weekly) basis.
For many of us, our home offices become our comfortable little nests where we spend the single biggest part of our days and because they are such familiar places, the tendency to let them get messy and unorganized can be a problem.
Let’s give ourselves some quick reminders and encouragement so we can make some progress on improving our home work environment. While it’s not easy to measure, when our home offices are pleasant and well organized, it puts us in a position to do better work and be more productive.
1. Clamp the cables
I might have titled this one “Tame the technology.” There are all kinds of cool cable and tech organizing gizmos on the market today. Do yourself a solid and head down to Staples or any nearby large office supply store and see what they have. Stock up on some items, haul them back to your home office and bring order to the spaghetti that’s probably coating the sides and back of your desk.
2. Clear the clutter
Survey all your work surfaces for items you’ve left out but don’t use any more. Declutter your work area. This is the first magic trick that house stagers use to make a home that’s up for sale seem more appealing to prospective buyers; it works just as well for your home office.
However, take it one step further with your home office. Don’t stop at clearing the clutter from the tops of tables and desks, clear the clutter from your computer desktop as well. The more files you have taking space, the slower your computer runs. See if your computer has software that will help you reclaim and reorganize disk space. If so, run it according to instructions.
3. Discard some documents
Related to clearing away the clutter is tossing documents that are no longer relevant. Do you have a file cabinet that’s beginning to fill up with documents that are completely outdated? Take a half hour to leaf through them, tossing out as many as possible. In the process you might also find some things you’ve forgotten about that will serve as fresh inspiration or guidance for your small business.
The same principle applies to your computer. One folder that definitely deserves review is your “Downloads” folder. It can end up storing hundreds of files that we use one time – or not at all – and these files can be huge. Often images will end up in our Download folders and they take up a lot of disk space. There’s a good chance that you can toss out everything in your Download folder.
4. Look at your layout
Finally, take a step back and see if you might want to rearrange your home office layout. Is it in the best location? Do you have a window? Natural light?
Some people like to move thrier furniture very often and that can be a good idea. For some reason, freshening areas up by rearranging the major furniture items seems to pump new energy into the spaces. It’s good to get out of ruts.
And if you don’t have a desk that can be raised so you can sometimes work from a standing position, Organize Your Home Office Day would be a good time to place an order for one. Of course, a good chair and ergonomics are important points to consider as you organize your home office for maximum productivity.
Unfortunately, it’s human nature to stop paying attention to the people and places that are nearest to us on a daily basis. We take them for granted. But with the work space in our home, if we make that mistake we also begin to lose productivity and even creativity. Take this day to correct that tendency.