Hacks to Minimize Your Home Office

Working from home has become the norm for many of us in recent times. Sometimes our homes spill into our office and other times our offices invade our house. Either way it’s extremely easy to accumulate clutter in our home offices. Read on for my 6 best hacks to minimize your home office.

Cluttered workspaces cause a cluttered mind and make it harder to focus and be productive. That’s why it’s essential to be proactive in minimizing your home office to create a more organized and efficient working environment.

Unfortunately, for most people the organizing and re-organizing of a home office becomes an habitual task that takes time away from real productivity. Having systems and processes in place to eliminate time sucking clutter chores is a minimalists secret weapon.

Here are those seven hacks to help you minimize your home office:

Declutter Regularly

Set aside some time each day to declutter your home office. Go through your desk, bookshelves, and drawers and get rid of anything that you no longer need. Re-evaluating clutter allows you to purge items that age themselves out of relevance in your life.

Continuously donate or sell items that are still in good condition. Recycle or dispose of anything that can’t be used. A few minutes per day eliminating clutter saves hours of lost productivity later. If your stuff overtakes your space you can waste an entire day to rectify the situation.

Invest in the Right Storage

Invest in storage solutions such as filing cabinets, storage boxes, and shelves to keep your office organized. These can help you store away items that you don’t use regularly and make it easier to find what you need. Set up your home office so that commonly used items are within arms reach and rarely used items are neatly tucked in an easily accessible storage space.

Shifting towards minimalism doesn’t mean never buying anything. Spending money on the right things can save so much aggravation. It might not seem like the time you spend searching for items is that big of a deal, but those lost moments lead to derailing productivity. Needing a specific piece of paper or a stapler shouldn’t take you out of your workflow. Every item should have a place.

Make Digital Your BFF

Every entrepreneur desires to minimize home office paper clutter. With the advancement of technology, you can go paperless and store most of your documents in the cloud. This will not only save space but also make your work more organized.

Every new system or technology you set up will have an annoying learning curve. Becoming someone who scans in receipts or pays all bills online might take some getting used to. But the upfront time it takes to learn the new process will quickly pay itself back in recovering future time you would have spent staying stuck in your ways.

Switching from a paper to a digital calendar ensures your engagements are synced across all your devices. You can eliminate double booking or forgetting to write down an appointment when you get home. Post it’s can turn into task lists on your mobile device. Share your lists with assistants, partners, and even children. Having shared information expands the number of people involved in executing life’s to-do’s.

Create a Happy Space

Minimalism isn’t just about decluttering, it’s also about creating an aesthetic that pleases you. Choose a color scheme that’s easy on the eyes, and select furniture and decor that’s functional and simple. It’s a myth that all minimalist decor is black and white. I adore color. My only intention is to avoid clutter.

One of my absolute favorite decor stores in America is Ross. Funky unique pieces can inspire feature walls that ooze inspiration. If your dream life takes place in Paris, then go Eiffel Tower crazy. You want to earn just enough to escape to a beach somewhere, fill your office with every beach vibe except sand. Full-time snowboarding is your life’s purpose? Splash that on every surface.

Your office is meant to be welcoming and encourage you to get your ish done. There is no better way to create a happy space than to fill it with your heart’s desires.

Functional Furniture

Buying small storage solutions and decor is small potatoes compared to a massive overhaul of furniture. We tend to create spaces based on the large furniture that already exists in our home.

An office might be thrown together with a desk you had out in the garage and a side table that had been pushed into the corner of the dining room. Intentional ideal office furniture can feel like a big commitment. Look for furniture that serves more than one purpose, such as a standing desk that can be converted into a sitting desk or a storage ottoman that can double as a seat.

Create an office that you want to work in. I loathe sitting at a desk, so having some amazing desk is not going to encourage me to work. I prefer to curl up on chairs or sofas, sometimes I shift and prop my laptop on my lap with a pillow. My office wouldn’t need a desk to help my productivity. Design your office to reflect your ideal work environment.

Manage Your Time

Being mindful of your most important tasks can reduce your inclination to waste time on distractions. Keep track of your to-do list and schedule with a task manager, such as a calendar or a to-do list app. This will help you stay organized and on top of your necessary work.

Give yourself a few minutes at the beginning of your work day to set the stage for a productive day. Minimize your home office distractions by removing stacks of laundry that got dumped in your office, adios any dirty dishes, and emptying trash bins.

Plan out the rest of your day by identifying your most critical tasks. Knowing what is in store for your day will help you stay focused and reduce procrastination. Be sure to identify how the rest of the week, month, and year looks too. And at the end of your day give your office a reset to solve any distracting elements that have creeped in throughout the day.

If I didn’t have a firm writing schedule detailed on my digital task list, I might find myself staring at my tax papers or reading through advertisements for new cleaning companies. Instead of sorting through, reading, or organizing my crap, I write because I know that’s what I should be doing.

I hope these hacks to minimize your home office help you be more productive.