Organizing Offices, Study Areas and Store Rooms
Hi, This is so embarrassing. I can’t seems to organize my study room or store room. Every time I clean and organize it, after a while, it’s messy again. I am the only one using it, not other family members.
Please Help! Gina
Gina, it really is hard to keep offices and storage rooms under control so don’t feel too bad about having trouble staying organized. We all have problems with storage areas and heavy use areas (the kitchen counter and table are two other examples).
Here are a couple of things that might help keep your study area and storeroom more organized:
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When you do clean it make sure you get rid of as much as you can. This is probably the hardest step but the most important.
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Then make sure everything has a home. If you can’t find a home for something (a specific place to keep it) then you either need to get rid of it or find another place to keep it, possibly in another room.
Keep books, files and other papers stored in a vertical position and not horizontally, like laying flat on a desk. Once something gets set on a horizontal surface like a desk or a counter, it becomes a magnet for anything that doesn’t have a home. This is often the beginning of a big mess that will have to be organized later.
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Put it away. Develop the habit of putting something back where it belongs as soon as you’re finished with it. Don’t lay it down and expect to get back to it later. Usually, you’ll be on a different track later and you won’t get right back to it. Put it back in its home.
You have to just keep on top of storage rooms, offices and other areas like this and just keep organizing a little as you go. These rooms usually get used or dumped in a lot and will tend to get out of control so either daily, once a week or once a month set aside a time to clean it once again. You can do it how often you want although since it drives you crazy I would say clean it at least once a week.
Keeping your office organized is like doing the dishes. Just when you get them washed, it suddenly seems like there are more to do. You can either save them and wash a mound of dishes once a day or keep on top of it by washing them each time you use one or after a meal.
I went into great detail about cleaning and organizing your home in our Keeping it Clean e books, so you might want to check it out.
-Jill
Photo By: banspy
The question I would ask is, do you really use your office or is is someplace to keep your things while you work elsewhere (kitchen table, living room couch, etc.)?
We had an office that we couldn’t keep clean no matter what! We finally realized that we weren’t even really using it – even though we thought we were – and thus things would get set down and never picked up again for long periods of time. So when we did want to use the desk, it was covered with stuff. Usually I worked at the kitchen table and my husband likes to write and study curled up on the couch.
So, we emptied out the room – gave our son his own room – and moved our filing cabinet into the (very wide) hallway downstairs and bought a small secretary to hold office supplies and give us a surface to put the laptop on when we needed it. The printer and our dictionary, etc. live on top of the filing cabinet and the secretary needs to be closed if we aren’t working on it (otherwise it’s tricky to get through the hallway). Much better! Now we “need” to keep things put away and we don’t have a room full of junk anymore!
In general we found that we were trying to make our needs fit the the spaces that we “needed” and “had” rather than making our home fit our lives. Now that we’ve cleaned out and rearranged and asked ourselves if every single thing fits our life or if we just have it because we “should”, we have far less clutter, our spaces are way more useable and we’re a lot happier and less stressed!
Good luck with your struggle! It took us 11 years to figure out what our “problem” was…
Lea
For a few years due to space (very limited) we had my desk and desk top computer in the bedroom.
We bought me a lap top so that when Don was night shift I could use the lap top downstairs.
Well I still prefer my desktop but would not use it for some unknown reason. Well unknown until recently. We moved it down to the living room. I have put the lap top away only for trips is it out of storage.
I am a bit claustraphobic and I need sunlight to feel comfortable.
We have dark blinds and curtains in the bedroom so Don can sleep during the day.
Now I am in the light and love sitting here typing stories and talking to people.
The desk is not covered with clutter because it is in use all the time and being in the living room where company can see it, it stays cleaned up.
So maybe moving the office or parts of it to a different area would help with organizing the space.
It makes a huge difference on things like that Grandma. I am the same way. Sometimes it takes just moving something and I will use it 10 times more.
Tawra also had trouble because of her FM in one house with the office and family room being on the second level of their home. They finally moved their bedroom down to the family room/office and the office upstairs. It helped so much because instead of running up and down stairs from the kitchen and upper level to do office stuff it was right there on the same level. Just because the builders meant for a room to be one thing doesn’t mean you have to use it for that.
Another funny thing about moving things. When we have a garage sale sometimes certain things just aren’t selling, if we move them to another spot they will sell. So funny.
Welcome back Grandma! I can relate to the bedroom being dark and uninviting. My husband works nights also and we have very heavy blinds and curtains. I couldn’t understand why I dreaded dusting, vacuuming and tidying in the bedroom and one day I realized it’s because it’s always so dark and depressing in there. In other rooms in the house I have blinds and curtains open even on dreary days because the light is beneficial to my moods. It hardly seemed worth opening the blinds and curtains in the bedroom since my husband would just have to close everything back up to be able to sleep. Now I know what my issue is with that room and it makes it a little easier. The littlest things…
I’m working on point number 2 — making a home for everything. This includes catalogs that I want to look through for ideas and newspaper ads for the grocery stores. I had been just leaving them on my desk, and they were taking up so much room. I’ve now got them vertical in a box under the desk. I can pull it out and look through these things easily. And they don’t take up valuable room on the desk.
Also, and this really helps me, is I set aside one day of the week that I sort through everything on the desk. On Mondays. I bill-pay, record receipts into my ledger, check on appointments for the week, etc. At least for 1 day, my desk is totally clear, until the next Monday rolls around.
But like Jill said, I have to keep on top of it. But I look at that task as part of my job.