Tips to Stay Organized in Your Home Office

For some of us, organization comes as naturally as breathing air. Others need a little bit more… direction to arrive at efficient organization status. If you feel like you fall into the latter of the two, then this blog is just for you.

Why Stay Organized at Home

You might be wondering why bother organizing things in your home office. Well, haven’t you ever been in a situation where you knew you had an important document that you needed to retrieve right in that moment, but couldn’t find it? How about when it comes time to shred unneeded documents but you have to sort through every single paper you own just to see if it’s important or not?

Building the Perfect Organization System

Proper organization comes from determination and the building good habits, but before getting there, you need to have a good system in place. If your organization system is too complicated or too simple, it might fall apart on you.

Here are some organization systems that can help you build those good habits.

Utilize Different Colors for Similar Files

Never underestimate the power of colorization. Being able to visually narrow down the files without having to even real labels is a huge time saver. Utilize a variety of color folders of separators to distinguished and group files of a similar nature. For example, you can keep all your financial related paperwork, like bills and investments, in green folders, while you keep medical records in red folders. When you have a general idea of what you are looking for, separating files like this easily speeds up the document finding process.

Separate Files Based on Usage

You are probably holding onto a variety of documents that require varying degrees of access, or don’t even need at all. Separating these documents can make finding the documents you need much easier. Some recommended categories are:

• Action – These are files that need to be dealt with immediately, like bills, parking tickets, invitations, etc.
• Archive – Files that are important to hang onto, but don’t need daily access, like tax returns and medical records
• Common – These files are ones you need to access on a regular basis, like receipts for taxes this year, user manuals, etc.
• Recycle – Papers that don’t contain any sensitive information that you no longer need
• Shred – Any documents that have any sensitive information on them that require document shredding

Organizing Everything Else

Odds are your home office doesn’t just include paper documents. You probably have office supplies like sticky notes, staplers, writing tools, mailing supplies and more. Taking the time to organize these supplies will also speed up productivity in your home office, and make it look less cluttered. Consider getting specific containers / drawers for each type of office supply you have. Invest in a label maker and mark each container in a highly visible way so you can save time on searching.

Dispose of Unused Documents

Now that you have all your documents and other assorted clutter in your office clearly organized and separated, it’s time to get rid of what you don’t need. Double check the papers you put in that recycle pile though. Any amount of personal information can give well trained identity thieves what they need to impersonate you. Anything with your name and address on it should be put in the shredding pile.

When it comes time to shred that pile, call us up! Our industry standard shredding truck does a far better job at shredding documents to the point they are utterly unrecognizable. Our cross-action blades rip and tear at paper in practically every direction, while home office shredders typically turn paper into recoverable strips. Don’t take chances with your personal information. Get a free shredding quote today!