Whether you work from a corporate business building or a home office, the appearance and functionality of your space is heavily influenced by your organization. Having a regimented office space will increase your productivity simply because your workspace is more efficient. In addition, a well-organized office will impress your boss, your co-workers, and your potential clients by demonstrating your ability to work neatly and professionally.
If you are interested in letting your workplace speak for your efficiency and work ethic, there are many helpful websites available that will guide you in the proper direction to create your ideal office. With a step-by-step process, there is no need to feel overwhelmed or that you cannot make a productive workspace your reality. Here are just a few of the most helpful sites available to guide you through your quest for office organization:
Productivity 501
Managed by business consultant Mark Shead, Productivity 501 produces original content approximately once a week intended to increase your productivity in the workplace. One of Shead’s most helpful posts involves tips for keeping an organized desk, a system that he developed from his own business experience. With links to pictures of his personal home office set-up, Shead’s suggestions are both simple and easily applicable for the individual who is looking to organize his or her desk. He begins with some basic tips for de-cluttering your desk before making more detailed suggestions about becoming paperless and organizing the many wires associated with the newest technologies necessary for every modern office. The suggestions are provided in an easy-to-read numbered list, allowing you to print the post and check off each tip as you attempt it. Many of Shead’s guidelines are also hyperlinked to other blog posts that he has provided concerning the same topic. For example, as Shead discusses how you can become a more digitally-based office, he links to another set of guidelines he has written demonstrating how to scan necessary documents along with storing important files. These extra tips make this blog exceptionally useful.
The Home Office Organizer
Offering 31 neatly organized tips, this website gives more than enough suggestions for keeping a systematically ordered office space. Beginning with some encouragement that you can easily rearrange your office and become more organized through a series of baby steps, this blog promises you a surprising amount of efficiency at the end of 31 days. While the site boldly declares that it provides enough tips to have your at-home office space organized in a month, these same ideas can be applied just as successfully to your corporate office if that is where you do the majority of your work. Notable suggestions from this website include specific ways to color-code, organize, and store files, methods for choosing the perfect office furniture, and useful instructions for shredding confidential documents. Each tip is listed systematically with hyperlinks to ease your browsing. If you would prefer, the website’s suggestions are also available in a downloadable e-book.
Julie Morgenstern
As a guest writer and blogger for Oprah Winfrey’s magazine and website, Julie Morgenstern is a professional organizer and productivity consultant. With several published books and a great deal of success in the national media, Morgenstern’s suggestions for O magazine focus on getting your life organized, and in doing so, you will remedy your office space as well. Through her simple approach, you can decrease your stress and anxiety by flexing your control over your personal space. According to Morgenstern, the best method for doing this begins by creating your own filing system. Her process starts by instructing you how to choose which items that you currently keep in your office can become part of the day’s trash. Morgenstern claims that nearly 80 percent of the items that you think you need to file away for the future will never be looked at again, and she lists several questions that you can ask yourself to determine what you need to keep and what you need to toss. Once you have your office simplified, Morgenstern also suggests ways that you make your office more attractive to your working sensibilities and therefore more efficient (e.g. storing documents offsite). With a brief and easy-to-follow presentation, Morgenstern’s tips are simple, logical, and easily applicable to every office set-up.
I’m an Organizing Junkie
Also featured in our Home Organization Site Roundup, this website, established by a self-professed organization junkie, offers proposals for arranging every room of your home, and there are more specific suggestions for a home office that can be equally applicable to a corporate space. Guest blogger Ariane Benefit, who runs her own Neat & Simple Living Blog, contributed this particular article that focuses on the reasons to take the time to organize your office. Using an analogy explaining your particular annoyance if your morning coffee necessities were scattered all over your business and comparing it to a disorganized office, Benefit believes that you need to sit down and seriously assess your personal office needs. If you then use your resources to address those particular needs, she says that you will have a beautifully organized and productive office. She thinks that you should begin by considering the type of work that you do, the tools that you need to do your job, and the changes that can be made to your workspace that will most improve your working environment. Some of Benefit’s best tips include considering an L- or U-shaped desk that will provide more workspace and moving your most frequently used objects closer to you for easier access. She has completed several office organizing makeovers, and she provides links to pictures of her work. In addition, Benefit offers more tips in her free downloadable e-book that is also available through a hyperlink at the conclusion of the article.
Routine Habit Blog
Touting home organization and time management, this blog is managed by Sharon Thoms, another self-described organizer and blogger. Her organizing an office series is particularly helpful, offering seven steps for getting your workspace clean and ordered. The series kicks off with some basic positive encouragement for beginning your de-cluttering journey before offering some more pointed suggestions about what to keep and what to throw away. Her office planning section details methods for creating work stations where each daily activity can be completed in a separate area to cut down on clutter and wasted space. Thoms even offers suggestions for improving the paint color and layout of your office to increase your productivity. Her tips for filing and storing cover both digital and non-digital documents, as well as some gadgets meant to improve your productivity in your office. Thoms has clearly done her research, as she indicates the studies and tried-and-true methods provided by professional organizers while supplementing her suggestions with pictures and downloadable images that will assist you as you begin to piece together your own offices. Thoms encourages feedback and reader suggestions, so you are more than welcome to comment on her work or to make an organization proposal.
Each of these websites offers a variety of tips for de-cluttering and organizing your home or corporate office. Although there are many different ways to begin, as well as a number of methods for obtaining the perfectly organized office, each of these sites will lead you to the same goal: having a more efficient and more accessible workspace. There’s no doubt that a well-organized office will decrease your stress from being unable to locate an important document while increasing your productivity and happiness.
