Southern Mom Loves: Easy and Affordable Home Office Organizing Ideas

Easy and Affordable Home Office Organizing Ideas

Wednesday, August 17, 2016

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With kids going back to school across the country, now is the perfect time to organize your home office. It should be a place where you can walk in and can get to work immediately. A place to manage your work, life, and your family's lives. If you have to dig through piles of paper to find your bills, you can use a little organization, and creating an efficient home office space doesn't mean you have to spend a lot of money. The following home office ideas are budget-friendly, easy to implement, and will have you organized in no time.

Carve out your space. If you don't have an extra room in your home that you can designate as an office, carve out a corner, or even a closet, in a quiet, out-of-the-way area. You might want to have a central space so that you can keep an eye on things while you work, but I guarantee your desk will become a way station for mending toys, dropping off drawings, and family message-taking, while you won't be able to find a pen to save your life. Honey, did you take my notebook? Make sure everyone knows that your office is not a supply closet.

Add bins to your desk drawers. If you find that you have to dig through your drawers to find anything, invest in a few cheap, dollar store mini bins. These small, plastic, open-top baskets are great for organizing desk drawers, and they come in a variety of sizes and colors. You can use different sizes so that you fill the drawer perfectly and don't lose any space. If you find that the boxes slide around a bit, use poster putty to keep them in place. You can find something similar in a set here on Amazon.

If you don't have desk drawers to store your pens/pencils, paper clips, binder clips, and other odds and ends, get yourself a desktop supply caddy or a set of heavy cups or mugs to keep everything in its place.

Clear the paper from your desk with a wall organizer. A great way to organize those piles of paper is to get yourself a wall organizer with multiple bins. You may be able to find these at a dollar store, thrift shop, or yard sale. You can go with a basic set like these, or go with a cool, decorative set like this one.

If you have the room on your desk, and you don't have a ton of papers, you can go with a set of two desktop paper trays for "In" and "Out" boxes. Just use these for papers that need your attention and papers that need to be given out, like signed permission slips and bills to put in the mail. You can get basic letter trays just about anywhere that sells office supplies.

Invest in a file cabinet. Once you've taken care of your paperwork, it's time to file it away out of sight. If you don't already have a file cabinet, you can find them used on Craigslist or at thrift stores, or invest in a cheapie one for around $60. Set it up with labeled hanging file folders and alphabetize them so you can find anything in a flash.

A cheaper option is to buy a package of Banker's Boxes if you have the storage room.

Get yourself a bookshelf or a set of wall shelves. If you tend to have a lot of books, binders, or memorabilia stacked on your desk, a bookshelf or a set of wall shelves is the way to go. You don't have to spend a bundle; You can repurpose one that you already own, find them used on Craigslist or at yard sales or thrift shops, or buy a small one at Walmart or Target for around $20-$30.

If your shelf looks a little worse for wear, you can always clean it up and paint it. One of the best parts of your home office is customizing it to suit you and the way you work. If you work best in a stylishly decorated environment, get creative with paint!

Use an over-the-door shoe organizer for extra office supplies. Say you don't have a place to store those extra office supplies, you don't have the money to invest in a cabinet, and you don't want to clutter up your drawers with 6 boxes of staples; An over-the-door shoe organizer may work wonders for you. You want to get one that has clear pockets that allows you to see everything on hand. Just put a different item into each pocket and you'll have everything where you can see it and easily grab it. You can hang it over a door, or from a wall with a set of hooks.

Store odds and ends in decorative boxes or baskets. Clutter usually comes from those items you need, but don't know where to put. Decorative boxes are great for these items. Just open the lid, toss in the items, and you've got a clean office. If you have a handy-dandy bookshelf, you can double your organization and make your bookshelves more visually appealing by using decorative boxes or baskets to hold and hide clutter between your books/binders. Boxes can range from utilitarian to pretty to very cool. You can find large plastic baskets at the dollar store, or go with woven, woven with fabric lining, or fabric.

Create an area for notes, to-do lists, and calendars. Last, but not least, clear the paper clutter from your desk by creating an area on your wall for notes, to-do lists, etc. This will make actionable tasks visible at a glance.

You can get a cork board and wrap it in a pretty fabric to use as a place to pin important notes. You can paint an area of your wall with chalkboard paint for writing your to-do list, goals, etc. A dry erase calendar can also be hung on the wall to help you schedule your week or month. Think of this wall as your action center.

Your home office doesn't have to be a disorganized mess. There are so many easy ways to organize everything from office supplies to notes. Best of all, you can do it on the cheap. Have fun creating your ideal workspace!


Could your home office use some organization? What is your biggest organizing problem? I love to read your comments!

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