How to Organize Your Desk

In honor of Clean Your Desk Day, Horderly wants to help you get your deskspace or home office organized! 

No matter what kind of job you have, or what tasks you’re performing at your desk, having an organized, functional space will not only make your life easier but increase your productivity, too! 

The first step in creating an organized desk space is to declutter! First, take all items off the top of your desk, out of drawers and off of nearby shelving. Separate all items into piles by category, or what type of item it is. For example, put all writing materials together, all electronics together and all books together. 

Once you’ve sorted your items into categories, edit pile-by-pile. Editing is the process of deciding what to keep, toss or donate! As you edit through your items, consider how often you use the item, or whether its use is no longer needed. 

After the editing process is complete, determine which items deserve prime real estate and which do not. Prime real estate is easily-accessible areas that should hold your most often-used items – so that you can get to them quickly and easily! Anything you’re not using regularly but still need should be placed up high, down low or in another space in your home. 

At Horderly, we encourage clients to keep their desks clutter-free, with most items living inside desk drawers or bins on shelving. Everything should have a specific home.

A clear desktop will also give you a clear mind (the same goes for your computer desktop)! Make sure to only keep items you absolutely need or really love on your desk.

We love setting up “to do” stations on client’s desks so that no task gets left behind! Create a mail station with papers that need to be addressed, and then file them away after the task is complete. Set aside time (depending on how much mail you get) once a day, or once a week, to go through your to-do list, handle any action items, and file away any papers that need to be kept.

If your drawers also serve as a filing cabinet, use file folders to separate different categories of papers. This is a great place to store papers that you need to keep, once you’ve dealt with them at your “to do” station. 

Make sure your paper categories are separate, so you can easily find them in your archives whenever you need to access them again. For example, make sure your medical files are clearly separated from work files or files for your family members. 

Inside drawers, put your most-used items in the top drawers, and lesser-used items in the bottom drawers. 

If your drawers are large and open, use dividers to separate items by category. This creates structure and limits objects from rolling around in the drawer and creating a mess. 

Labeling is crucial when organizing your desk area, and documents! We love the Brother P-Touch CUBE Plus label maker for all of our labeling needs. 

Labeling is the final step in the organizing process, to ensure all items have been placed in their proper home, and to ensure that after use, they end up back where they belong! 

For more information on all things Horderly – including lots of great tips, tricks and other #HorderlyHabits – check out our blog or reach out for more information!

This content is independently curated by Horderly and may earn us a commission.