National Get Organized Week, Day Four: Organize Your Home Office

Thursday, October 9

How to Organize a Desk

The home office desk is where you do your work so it’s important to keep it clean. Today our organizing project will clear all paper items off the top of the desk and have everything put away where it belongs.

What you need:

1. Sturdy box

2. Wood cleaner or multi-purpose cleaner and soft cloth

3. Wastebasket

Estimated work time: 1.5-2 hours

What to do:

There are two ways to remove everything from a surface before organizing:

1. Take every single item made of paper off your desk or work space and put them in a box. This includes mail, sticky notes, magazines, article printouts and active files.

2. Working from left to right, clear the work space as you go.

Either way works fine; it just depends on your own preference. So let’s keep going.

3. Go through the box and recycle, throw away or put away everything. Tip: Your Inbox is best used for immediate action items; if you must have a “to be filed” spot use the Outbox below it and vow to clean it once a week.

4. Clean the work surface with furniture polish (if it’s wood) or a multi-purpose cleaner and dry thoroughly.

5. When done, your desk shouldn’t have any paper on it. If you really need to have paperwork right in front of you, use folders and an upright folder holder.

1. See our tip from Day Three–organizing garage tools
2. See our tip from Day Two: taking care of your shoes
3. See our tip from Day One: organizing one pantry shelf
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