Declutter Your Home Office: A Step-by-Step Guide

Hey there! I’m curious to know how your reference files are looking after all the hard work you put in last week. If you’re like most people, you ended up purging roughly half of the papers in those files.

So now that you’ve got your system for organizing tax documents in place AND your reference files cleaned out, we can now move onto how to declutter your home office. 

If you don’t have a designated room for your home office, go ahead and complete this week’s assignment focusing on whatever area(s) in your home serve this purpose (and you thought you’d be off the hook this week…nice try!)

{DOWNLOAD THE HOME OFFICE ORGANIZING CHECKLIST HERE}

 

The home office is one of the more complex spaces to organize because there are lots of moving parts. Therefore, we’re going to focus on completing the first 3 steps in the 5-step organizing process this week:  Evaluate, Sort, and Purge. We’ll move onto the Organize & Maintain steps next week.

How to Declutter Your Home Office

1. EVALUATE

Grab a pen and a notepad and take a seat at your desk.

Look around your home office and write down all of the functions you would like this room to serve.

What tasks take place in here now?

Are there any tasks that you’d like to add or subtract from that list?

After you flesh out the specific functions of your home office, it’ll become clear what things belong in here and what things need to go.

While you’re sitting at your desk, also write down what’s currently working in that space and what might need some tweaking.

Could the room function better by rearranging the furniture?

Is there a hard-to-open file cabinet drawer that prevents you from filing?

Do you constantly have project papers cluttering up your desk because you don’t have a designated place to store them?

Make a note of these things so they can be addressed this month as you declutter/organize the space.

{I love the look of my desk chair, but it gets a failing grade as far as ergonomics is concerned}

Once you’ve completed the evaluation step, it’s time to sort and purge! The best way to approach the home office decluttering process is to tackle one area at a time, completing the sort/purge process for one area before moving onto the next. Typical home office areas include:

• File cabinet (yey! You already did this last week)
• Desk
• Bookcases
• Bulletin board
• Closet
• Floor

Since you’ll be completely emptying out each shelf, drawer, bin, etc., this is a great time to give all of these areas a thorough cleaning.

2. SORT

Remember that declutter kit we created back in January? You get to put it to use this week during the sort and purge process!

 

Remove all of the items within the area of the office you’re decluttering and bring them to a nearby sorting area (this can be a table, bed, countertop, or even the floor if your back can handle it).

Do an initial rough sort by setting aside items that need to be moved to another room (these go in your RELOCATE bin). Next, set aside items that you immediately know you want to get rid of.

In the home office, these items might include such things as:

• Scraps of paper
• Broken pens/pencils
• Broken office equipment
• Outdated technology & software programs
• Unidentifiable cords and cables
• Manuals for items you no longer own
• Old receipts  

Place these items in your RECYCLE, TRASH, or DONATE bins accordingly.

Designate a larger container for PAPERS and place any loose papers that you come across during the sort process into this container. We’ll deal with sorting/purging paper after all of the items have been decluttered.

Once you’ve removed the items to be relocated, gathered up all of the papers, and quickly tossed those no brainer items, it’s time to deal with what’s left. Sort what remains by putting like items together into categories.

Common home office categories include:

• Books
• Stationary
• Product manuals
• Writing utensils
• Manuals 
• Equipment

If you run a home-based business, you might also have categories such as:

• Product samples
• Product inventory
• Marketing materials
• Business forms

3. PURGE

Once you see all of the items in each of your categories, it’s time to get ruthless. Use your purging prompts to make good decisions about what items truly deserve a space back in the room.

Consider the quantity of items you have in each category and downsize as much as possible. Get rid of anything that’s old, outdated, broken or generally unusable. If you’ve got multiples of an item, keep the highest quality/newest one and donate the rest.

4. DON’T FORGET THE PAPER

Once you’ve gone through the sort/purge process for all of the office areas, you’ll be left with a container of papers. You’re going to repeat the sort/purge process with this pile of papers, sorting the papers into one of four categories:

• ACTION
• HANDY REFERENCE
• LONG-TERM REFERENCE
• TOSS (recycle or shred)

Since you just organized your reference file system last week, go ahead and file papers in the long-term reference category. Once papers in the Toss category have been recycled/shredded, you’re left with just the Action and Handy Reference piles. If you’ve already got a system for containing these types of paper, go ahead and incorporate those papers into your system. If not, take a look at my recommended systems for organizing action papers and handy reference papers.

Your assignment for this week for decluttering your home office:

1. Make a list of all the activities that take place in your home office space
2. For each area in your home office (desk, bookshelf, closet), remove all items and sort them into the following categories:
   • Trash/Recycle
   • Relocate
   • Donate
   • Sell
   • Keep
   • Paper
3. Sort “KEEP” items by category
4. Sort papers into the following categories:
   • Active
   • Handy Reference
   • Long-Term
   • Toss
5. Put RELOCATE items away
6. Take DONATION items to your local donation center (or schedule a pick up)
7. Take the necessary steps to sell your SELL items (take to a consignment store, post on Craigslist)
8. File long-term reference papers away & recycle/shred papers in TOSS pile

 

After you’ve completed the decluttering step, share a photo of your KEEP categories on Instagram (use the hashtag #OrganizeandRefineChallenge and don’t forget to tag me) and/or share it in the Refined Rooms Facebook community.

This post is part of the Organize and Refine Your Home Challenge