Make Your Home Office Work For You

Take a long hard look at your home office area. Is it an area in the living room or bedroom? Do you use the kitchen table and carry your ‘desk’ around with you? Do you have a whole room to use for office space? Or maybe you are still in the throes of making an office space?

Whatever your situation, there is one thing that you will need and that is storage space. A home office is somewhere that you want to be able to sit and work and not be surrounded by clutter, so here are a few tips to help you on your way to a great home office, which will be a tidy and productive workspace.

Choose the perfect desk

There are lots of different desks to suit every space and you can choose a simple desk or something with added cupboards and shelves. Make sure that you will have space for everything you need and added shelving above and below can ensure that you have somewhere to store paperwork, books, folders and stationery.

A simple bookcase or shelving unit can offer a cheap but effective storage space, why not try adding a bookcase either side of your desk with some shelves above the desk to frame the desk and provide the perfect organisation space for everything you need.

Get noticed

Every good office needs a notice board. Cork pin boards are widely available and inexpensive, if you need to write reminders, think about investing in one, which is half cork board and half white board.

If you want something a little more stylish shop around for a magnetic board that fits in with your colour scheme.

Or take an old cork board, cover it with fabric of your choice and wrap pieces of elastic around it to create a colourful board that you can pin things to and tuck reminders and paperwork that needs dealing with inside the elastic.

Pegboards also offer an alternative notice board with space not only to keep reminders but also a brilliant space to store scissors, sellotape, headphones, cables, USB sticks and more and they make a space saving way to easily put your hands on some of those everyday essentials.

Make your stationery work for you.

There are so many stationery options available these days that you can easily create a workspace with coordinating stationery in your favourite colours. Stationery isn’t just about pots and pens, look out for key items that give you extra storage options.

Expanding files are a brilliant way to hide away paperwork in a simple to organise, ready made filing system.

Magazine files can be useful for more than just magazines, try using them for paperwork, books or even other stationery.

Many stationery ranges include storage boxes and sometimes even drawers that fit nicely on your desk or shelf. Invest in a pen pot or a desk tidy or even have a go at making your own.

Don’t get in a tangle

Cords and cables can be a difficult to control with so many different chargers and power cables, invest in a basket or plastic box and buy some small rectangular sticky labels.

Whenever a new cable arrives in the house, put a label around the cord and write down what it belongs to.

When it isn’t being used, wrap an elastic band around it to keep it separate and keep it in the basket, doing this will save you hours of searching and untangling.

Wherever possible try to choose things that are wireless and limit the wires and cables in the house.

For those cables that are on the desk, try using foldback or binder clips big enough to clip onto the side of the desk. Feed any wires through their own clip and you have a way of keeping the wired untangled and out of the way at the same time.

Think outside the box

If you have limited space, consider using the space beneath the desk with labelled boxes, remembering to leave enough room for you to sit comfortably.

If you have space for shelving, be creative and consider what you could put underneath the shelves and not just on top.

---

---