My home office is the place where I spend the majority of my time, so it also tends to be the messiest part of my house. I finally tackled cleaning up my desk area and getting my office closet organized once and for all. See the before and after on my home office organization project, plus tips for keeping it neat!
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These photos are 100 percent of my home office. It’s where I do all my blogging, freelance writing, and home management tasks like paying bills.
While I’d love to have a whole room for my office one day, I’m making do with what I have for now. The trick, no matter the size of your space, it to keep your office organized.
I’ve been a PC girl for almost my whole life. (My first was an Amiga and then a Commodore 64 as a kid.) Slowly, I’ve converted to the Mac side. I recently took the plunge and purchased a new computer, so I took that as the push I needed to get this workspace decluttered and organized.
Home office organization
Most of the task of organizing office supplies is going through what you have and getting rid of things that either don’t work or will never be used. Once you’ve tossed the things you don’t need, sort everything that is left into categories. Give each category a home and that’s it!
Everyday office supplies
The things I need within reach are on my desk or the shelf above it – pens, sticky notes, printer paper, etc. Everything else is in my office closet/cabinet. It’s a fairly large space, but I wasn’t using it well as you can see in this before photo.
As you can see, there was no method to my madness. I had to take out a lot of things to find what I was looking for sometimes. There were also craft supplies in there and other things that didn’t really go with office supplies.
Kids school supplies
The shoe organizer pockets on the door are one of my favorite all-purpose organizing tools. These were crammed with random things, almost like a junk drawer, so I took out everything, sorted the actual office supplies and kids’ school supplies, and then put them back in sections.
Electronics and computer accessories
To prep the shelves, I took everything out and ripped out some old, funky contact paper. I realized that a section of each shelf wasn’t actually attached… or original to the cabinet. So I took those extra boards out, making the shelves a little less deep, and had my husband paint the whole thing a nice, clean white.
I recycled a lot of old electronics and installation programs (Windows XP, anyone?) and wrapped cords up neatly. Now the top shelf has one section for PC games, baskets for various electronics categories, and one big bag of cords.
The bottom shelf holds my camera bag and accessories because they’re all odd sizes and shapes.
Miscellaneous office supplies
I sorted everything else into tall stacks or filed into photo boxes. That one drawer is the one I’m letting myself fill with stuff I don’t have a good home for yet.
Home office workspace
Once I had the desk and the cabinet in order, the whole area looked different! All I really did was get rid of clutter, making room to organize the things I do use regularly.
I used to keep most of my craft supplies with my office supplies. If you have limited space, you might need to figure out how to do that too. I’m lucky to have another closet where I can keep my craft supplies and it’s actually big enough to do crafts inside.
Once I finished my home office organizing project, I decided to tackle the craft closet.
Check out some other fun and creative ideas on One Mama’s Daily Drama:
Feels great to get it done! One closet or space at a time.
It does! Slow progress is still progress!