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I love organizing home offices! My clients spend long hours at their desks, so it's especially satisfying to create welcoming, peaceful, functional work environments for them. Below are photos from four clients’ home offices that I worked on this month.
Although the spaces are different, the process is the same. First, the client and I sort through and declutter each space along the periphery of their office, including closets, shelves, and cupboards. The client chooses their favorite keepsakes to display. I carefully dust, polish, and vacuum as we go.
Then I empty out the desk drawers and lay out their office supplies by category so the client can see how many duplicates they have. While the client pares down their extra office supplies and chooses their favorites, I clear off and wash down their desk top and wipe out the empty drawers.
Next I have the client set up their ideal desk top, usually just a laptop, lamp, and a few keepsakes. I have the client choose the supplies and tools that they use daily to sort into desk drawers for easy access. Instead of storing backup supplies in their desk, I move extras into peripheral storage, such as a closet.
Once the client has an empty desk top and streamlined drawers, we then tackle their mail, paperwork, and file system. I set up the client to work at their freshly cleaned desk, preferably with a delicious caffeinated beverage.
I presort their papers and files into ‘best-guess let go of,’ ‘best-guess keep’ and 'best-guess this looks like an important task to attend to’ and give them one small pile of presorted papers at a time to review. In this way, they can move through a huge amount of paperwork very quickly.
By the time we’re done, we’ve built a cohesive, pared-down new filing system, and all that’s left on their desk is a (usually quite small) pile of tasks and actual deskwork to do.
Finally, we take out (usually quite large) bags of recycling and trash, plus I take up to a carload of donations and specialized recycling to non-profits; for example, electronics to InterConnection, office and art supplies to Seattle ReCreative, and housewares to Goodwill.
As you can see below, the end result is a calm, spacious, and personalized home office that is a pleasure to work in.
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