Organizing Your Home Office Desk in 5 Easy Steps

If you’ve been working from home this past year, you know how important your work area is to your productivity. Today, guest blogger, Michelle Hansen of Practical Perfection offers five easy steps to getting your home office desk organized so you can find what you need when you need it whether it be 9-5 Monday – Friday or after hours…

A home office desk sometimes feels like a disaster zone. With piles of untouched papers, a handful of broken pens, and half-used notebooks all crammed inside, it’s easy for your desk to feel untidy and chaotic. Plus, trying to find anything in those messy drawers seems impossible.

If you want to improve your home office experience (or even breathe a little easier at home), conquering that desk is a necessary evil. But, don’t worry, organizing your home office desk can be really simple!

Step 1: Declutter your desk drawers

The first step when you’re organizing anything is to declutter. Working one drawer at a time, go through every single item. With pens, markers, and highlighters, check to see if they even work. You may be surprised how many have dried out!

Be strict as you go through any planners, notebooks, and stationery. Do you have notebooks you never use? If there is any stationery you rarely use, there’s no sense in letting it take up valuable space in your desk. Donate any good notebooks or stationery you’re discarding.

Be realistic as you’re decluttering and only keep what you really use or need. If you have multiples of things like staplers, calculators, or scissors, choose your favorites and donate the rest. You probably don’t need more than 1-2 of each of these items.

Step 2: Separate your supplies into categories

Once you’ve gotten your office supplies whittled down to the ones you actually use, it’s time to separate them into categories.

Start making separate piles on your desk or the floor for writing utensils, loose-leaf paper, notebooks, binders etc. If you find one of your piles is too large, this is a good indication that you might not have decluttered enough, and you might need to reassess your supplies and purge the a bit more.

As you categorize, pay attention to what you use the most. This will help you when you start to put everything back.

Step 3: Organize your drawers strategically

Prioritize your drawer space when you’re putting everything back inside your desk. This is when it’s important to remember what you use the most.

Your top middle drawer is prime real estate, so you want to fill it with things you use all the time. It’s usually thinner than the other drawers, so it limits what you can fit, but it’s perfect for things like pens, pencils, scissors, tape, rubber bands, or paper clips. Any small items you’re always reaching for are made for your top middle drawer.

Be thoughtful as you organize the rest of your drawers. Do you tend to reach to your right side or your left side more? What feels more natural? If you reach for your right-side drawers more often, use the top drawer on that side for things you use the most. Then the drawer beneath that should be filled with your second most-used items, and so on, until you fill the desk!

I would also suggest organizing the inside of your drawer by most-used to least-used as well. In each drawer, decide what items in that category you use frequently and put those at the front. Then work your way back, so the items at the very back of the drawers are the ones you use the least.

Step 4: Use dividers and small bins to keep your supplies contained

I love putting small containers or dividers in my desk drawer. First, it keeps everything tidy. Second, you never lose anything this way! (Unless you have kids who are always stealing the scissors…I’ve been there before.)

Find small, unlidded containers that fit in your desk and use them to separate as many items as you can. I keep sharpies, highlighters, and pens in separate containers, as well as safety pins, paperclips, and post-it notes.

Organizing your home office desk in this way is a game-changer. How often are you rifling through your drawer to find a paperclip or a rubberband? Keeping them in separate, contained areas means you won’t have any small items rolling around in your desk anymore and you’ll always be able to find them.

Step 5: Maintain your new organized desk with a few simple rules

After you’ve spent the afternoon organizing your home office desk, the last thing you want is for it to get untidy again, right?

Focus on maintaining your desk by implementing a few quick rules, like always putting things back where they belong. I know this sounds like common sense, but we often just throw things back in the drawer when we could take a few extra seconds to place it precisely in it’s container or zone.

I’d also suggest that you operate by the “one in, one out” rule when it comes to your desk. Home office desks have limited space, and if you’re bringing home lots of new stationery or pens when you never use the ones you already have, your desk is going to quickly get messy again. So, if you find a new notebook you just have to have, make sure you donate one you already have in your desk.

If you make it a rule to donate or discard items you already have when bringing home new items, it will either stop you from even buying that extra (and often unnecessary) stationery, or it will ensure that your desk stays organized no matter how much you buy.

Now, in five easy steps, you have an organized home office desk! All you have to do now is focus on step five, and you’ll never dread working from home again.

Michelle Hansen is a Wife, Mom of 3, and Professional Organizer. She has a passion for showing others how being organized can transform their lives for the better on her blog, Practical Perfection.