Faith-Based Finances

Current Article: De-Cluttering
Your Home Office

Many home offices become the “dumping ground” for all kinds of things that have no other place in your home.  The thought of sorting through all of this stuff can be overwhelming.  Yet the thought of going in and working in those conditions is nearly as bad. 

Instead of getting your work done, you sit and stress over the disorganized mess your home office has become.  De-cluttering will help organize your space so you spend less time working and more time with your family.  

Things You’ll Need

Trash receptacle
Recycle can
Shredding machine
1 personal label printer
3 small boxes or baskets
Laundry basket or cardboard box

  • Get a large laundry basket or cardboard box.  Now, go around the room and gather everything that does not belong in your home office.    This might be kid’s toys, coats and sweaters, shoes, and maybe even glasses and coffee cups.  Remove the basket or box to another room to be dealt with later.
  • Find all of the phone books and magazines.  Throw any outdated phone books or duplicates in your recycling container.  If the magazines are current put them on a shelf.  If they belong to your spouse or children take them to their room.  Ask family members to help out by putting all of their stuff in their room.
  • Label your small boxes to show: Important and To be Filed.  Sort through that big stack of papers on the desk.  Anything that doesn’t belong in your Important basket or your To Be Filed basket can either be thrown in the trash, thrown in the recycle container or in a 3rd container to be sorted later.  Throw away all of the junk mail. 
  1. Important: bills to paid, letters that need a response, credit card and cash card receipts, and discount coupons.  Anything that needs reasonably immediate attention should be in your “important” basket.
  2. To be Filed: important receipts, bank statements, any documents required for legal or financial record keeping, school reports, medical results and other significant papers including phone numbers and addresses written on scraps of paper.
  3. Sort: magazine articles, correspondence, children’s artworks, catalogues, photos, cards and letters that don’t require a response, recipes.
  4. Rubbish/Recycle: out-of-date vouchers, junk mail advertising, scraps of paper with phone numbers but no name, catalogues or magazines you’re read.  Carefully shred any documents that you no longer need but contains personal information. 
  • Your desk should hold your files, paper, pens, calculator, telephone, planner and of course computer.  If you are spending a lot of time searching for a particular document consider moving all of your files and papers to one central location, preferably close to the computer if that’s where you are doing the bulk of your work.
  • Keep your personal files and papers separate from your business things.  You will eventually have enough paperwork to deal with without having your personal bills, magazines and the kids’ after-school schedule mixed in.  Create a separate spot for those somewhere outside of your home office space.
  • Create a file system that works for you.  When it comes to your home office you are the boss.  Think about how you look for a particular file or piece of paper.  What will be the easiest way for you to find it? 
  • Deal with each box.  Make phone calls and pay bills.  Do whatever is necessary to deal with the Important papers so they can either be allocated to filing or discarded.  After developing your filing system, place everything from your File box into your new filing system.    Keep only those documents that will be needed again.  Where possible copy or transfer the information to another place (like a word processing document, a photo album or recipe book). 

Remember that it’s okay not to get this all done in one day.  Just keep at it every day, doing one task at a time.  Remind everyone, including yourself, that your home office is a place for you to work, not a storage room for excess stuff.  Once you can see the light at the end of the tunnel, you’ll find that you get more work done because you know where everything is, and you enjoy your clutter free work area.  After you have de-cluttered you’ll gain momentum and find further de-cluttering becoming even easier. 

Take it one step at a time.  What matters is that you’re tackling the job, not how long it takes you. 

  

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