Organizing any room in your home can be frustrating, especially when you have a smaller space to work with. Your office isn’t any different. Come with us as we give you all the most clever small home office organization tips and tricks to transform your space!
Space is often a luxury that we don’t have, especially when it comes to having a home office. Sometimes you need your furniture to play double duty to make it work, and that’s totally okay. We’re here to help with that!
In this blog post, we’ll give you all of our favorite tips and tricks for small home office organization. And if you enjoy this post, then you should definitely take a look at this one, which is all about living room ideas for small spaces.
This blog post is all about small home office organization.
Clever Small Home Office Organization Tips
1. Declutter
With any list of organization tips, your first step should be to declutter the area. The office area can collect a lot of random items and trash throughout the week, especially if you work from home with a busy schedule. It’s so easy to leave wrappers, jackets, and more.
Decluttering should not be a one-time thing. You should try to schedule a declutter time at least once a week or even twice a month, depending on your schedule. It will be so much easier to work without an overgrowing pile of trash or random items surrounding you, we promise!
2. If possible, go digital
Your home office space is not typically just where you work, if you have the luxury of doing so. It’s also the place where people tend to keep their important documents, ranging from home-related to medical. We used to have to keep every hard copy of any important document, but that’s not the case anymore. In order to free up more space in your office area, you should go digital when possible.
You can easily use your phone to scan, if you don’t have a scanner yourself. There are mobile apps that work great, such as Adobe Scan. Honestly, even the Notes App has a great scanner in it, if you have an iPhone.
Just remember that when you upload them, you need to label them as clearly as possible. Two great options is to have it in two places: one in an encrypted cloud and the other should be in an hard drive/USB.
3. If not, try a file system
If there’s no way you can go digital or you would rather not, then you should create a file system with something that best suits you and your documents. Even if you’re like, well, I’m only one person and I don’t have a lot of documents, I really don’t need a file system. We promise you that you will be grateful that you did this, especially if you start young.
You should categorize your documents in the typical categories: home/rental, insurance, medical, school, family, pet, etc. You may have more or less categories, but as long as you have a category for everything you need, it’s fine.
Another thing that people tend to add is color coding based on the subject. This is something that’s just usually more fun, but if you’re a visual person, it really helps with organizing.
4. Use binder, clips, and more
Additionally, if you would rather have a more traditional filing system then go digital, you need something to also organize your different subjects of documents. It’s super important that you utilize something to keep them separate from one another. Otherwise, it probably defeats the whole purpose. There are plenty of options, such as binders, folders, and binder clips. Honestly, if you would like, you could even use all three at the same time.
5. Get boxes for your smaller items
When we talk about smaller items, we’re usually referring to your pens, pencils, paper clips, and more. Organizing your smaller items that tend to be in and around an office desk is important because these easily become part of the clutter if you let them.
To organize them, get whatever fits with your office space. It could be small organizers, small boxes, or even one of those trays that fit nicely into the drawer of a desk. You need something that makes it super easy to put back in its spot when you’re done with it.
6. Label everything
One of the most underrated organizing tips is to label your items! The whole idea of organizing things is to be able to put things back easily and retrieve them just as easily. It won’t help if you have all of your items together in certain places, but no manner of knowing which container has what in it.
But this doesn’t mean that you need to buy some expensive label maker that you don’t have. Just grab some furniture tape and a permanent marker. Of course, if you want to get a little fancy with it, you can absolutely print off some pre-made labels, but it’s not mandatory. Do whatever works for you!
7. Make your furniture play double duty
If you have a small home office, then you need to maximize the space you do have by making your furniture play double duty. And when I say that, I mean using multifunctional furniture, like either wall-mounted or folding desks. Instead of those bulk cabinets, there are plenty of smaller ones that will do the job as well.
Sometimes the only “home office” you have is the corner of your bedroom or living room. If this is the case, then make use of different pieces of furniture for different uses. For example, maybe you use your office desk as your space to get ready as well. Make sure those items are separated, but this is a great example of making your furniture pull double duty!
8. Manage your tech
This is important, especially if you work from home. You need to keep your technology organized. We’re talking about cables, chargers, and more. If you have multiple monitors, you should also look into cable clips and ties and keep them running along the wall nicely.
Not only does it look messy, but it could also become a dangerous hazard to kids, pets, and even yourself if you’re not careful.
9. Go vertical
This is a really common tip for a lot of smaller spaces, but it’s a good one! You need to remember to start vertical first when adding any pieces of decor or functional additions to your office space. Utilize the walls around you before even touching the floor.
You can add pin boards, hooks, floating shelves, or whatever you need. If you have a calendar, to-do list, or even a chalkboard, put it on the wall!
