How is your home office looking these days? Let’s just say that you cannot seem to find that No. 2 pencil despite purchasing 10 of them every single month. That pretty much sums up many people who work from home, whether they are employed full-time by a business or they are entrepreneurs.
Ultimately, what causes everybody to get headaches from banging their hands against their desks are office supplies. You can’t seem to keep them in the same spot. But we have the tips to ensure that you can easily find an eraser, a Sharpie, or a phone charger.
Here are nine office supply organization ideas to avoid clutter in your home:
1. Buy the Right Desk
Yes, you could purchase a simple office desk from Ikea for $50. Or, you could fork over a couple of hundred dollars and acquire an office desk that has all the things you need for an organized office space.
A desk that has cupboard space, divisions, and places for your wires will prove to be a valuable investment. Depending on your suppliers, you could also buy a desk that comes with add-ons, like a small shelf or a tiny cabinet. Either way, you need a desk that can store a bulk of your must-have items.
You can kill two (or three or four or five) birds with one stone with a state-of-the-art desk.
2. Label Everything – Even the Obvious Ones
Whether you are self-employed as a freelancer or you are employed full-time by a large company, you will be bombarded with a lot of documents and paperwork. Sure, you could go paperless, but it might not be efficient right now. So, you need to store these documents for later reference.
Instead of just tossing it to the side, you need to file it away. But there is one more step to take: labeling. Labels are actually one of the most crucial office supplies for your business. Even if it might seem obvious, you need to label everything you have. This will make life easier since our memory can sometimes fault us when we need it the most. It doesn’t matter how many labels you have.
3. Add Dividers to Your Furniture
To better organize your office and to make all your documents, folders, and binders easily accessible and simple to find. When you want to accomplish this feat, it is a good idea to use dividers, which can be used to separate everything you have so they do not get bunched together.
For your office supply organization ideas, you can have one shelf be dedicated to receipts, while one bin can be for contracts.
4. Erect a Charging Station
As an entrepreneur, you potentially possess multiple computers, smartphones, tablets, and perhaps even an e-reader. Now, you likely charge them whenever the battery is dying and wherever you happen to be. Unfortunately, this creates chaos and disrupts your order in your home office.
What’s the solution? A charging a station. It is important to dedicate a certain area of your office to charging your technology.
5. Head to the Cloud
Speaking of paperless… The best way to declutter, maintain a clean office space, and still have sufficient access to all your documents is by traveling to the cloud.
A web service or software can allow you to save, store, and share files. They can also act as calendars, to-do lists, and anything else that traditionally required paper and a filing cabinet.
6. Swap Cabinets for Transparent Bins
Cabinets are loud, bulky, and expensive. They can transform an office into a cold and desolate environment. Also, filing cabinets may make you inefficient because you might have way too many folders to sift through. Is there a better way? Yes, there is: Transparent bins.
For a few bucks at your local Walmart or favourite Amazon merchant, you can buy transparent bins and make searching for receipts for your six-month-old printer that much easier. Plus, they are much more pleasing to the eye – well, as long as you maintain them!
7. Insert Wheels to Your Desk
Do you want to be near the window today? Are you trying to clean your home office space? Have you added an assistant to your day-to-day operations and need to make room? Whatever your situation might be, one of the best office supply organization ideas is to insert casters on the bottom of your desk, which makes reorganisation less hectic and time-saving!
8. Take Advantage of Wall Space
If you have a compulsive disorder, then searching through drawers for scissors and scotch tape can be frustrating and adds dirt and clutter. A simple trick is to take advantage of wall space.
You don’t need to invest a fortune either. All you need is a pegboard to store pens, hole punchers, and markers.
You also free up valuable real estate doing this!
9. Automate Your Office Inventory
Did you forget to buy 1,000 sheets for your printer? Are you running low on printer ink? Have you just realized you are completely out of highlighters? Well, you can avoid this from happening by automating your office inventory.
Believe it or not, there are many digital services that offer this tool of either reminding you to purchase office supplies or immediately ship them to you on a specified date.
Your home office is your productivity hub, your working oasis, and your moneymaking venue. Since you will be spending a significant portion of your day in this area, you want to make it a paradise. The only way to transform it into a Shang-Ri-La is to make it organized, and this starts by concentrating on your supplies, no matter how small and insignificant they may be.
Now, where did you put that No. 2 pencil?
