12 Organization Tips For Your Office

The kitchen is where your body’s nourishment comes from, and your bedroom is where you get your daily dose of good night sleep. Even so, your home office is the nerve center of your entire home as it’s from where you work from so that you can finance all facets of your household. For it to maintain its function, a home office requires good organization. Good news is that you neither need to be an astute do-it-yourselfer nor have a huge budget to create a well-organized office. We are happy to share some simple, smart and cost-effective office organization ideas that will make your working space functional and dazzling.

  1. Extra Large Cork Board

Don’t let the high price tag attached to rolls of cork deter you. You can make yourself a large pin board by making use of cheap IKEA cork placemats and lattice from the local hardware store. Follow this tutorial for insights.

 

  1. Cover Office Chair with Fancy Fabric

Source : Little Green Notebook

Nothing does a better job at changing that dull-looking office chair to a comfy glamorous office necessity like some fancy fabric and Mod Podge. When making a pick, be sure to choose a fabric that complements your style and color scheme.

  1. Toss Routers into Decorative Paper Boxes

Source: Sweet Sanity Designs

While electronics are every home’s must-haves, they can create a mess if their cables are left lying around. Keeping them in decorative paper boxes is a sure way to keep your office space tidy.

  1. Make Printer Storage out of the Dresser

Source: PB&J Stories

Believe it or not, your dresser is one handy piece of furniture that could help get the printer out of the way. Check out this quick tutorial that gives you instructions on how to transform one of your dresser’s drawers into a perfect hideaway for your printer.

  1. Get Crafty

Source: Mod Podge Rocks

While cereal boxes and old paper towel tubes are one man’s trash, they can prove to be quite valuable to you. With glue, paint and scrapbook paper, you can easily craft your inexpensive yet alluring desk accessories from them.

  1. Kick Confusion Out with Cord Tags

Source: The Chic Site

Ever spent a couple of precious minutes trying to make out what plug belongs to which electronic device? We all have. The best way to put a stop to the confusion is to use adorable washi tape tags to each plug.

  1. Turn Simple Cans Into Glamorous Cups for Pens

Source: Creature Comforts

Do you always throw away soup cans? Don’t underestimate their worth. You can easily turn them into glamorous cups for pens and pencils. Just add metallic leather cording around the cans and secure with hot glue.

  1. Make an Office Gem Out of a Used Cabinet

Source: Two Twenty One

New metal file cabinets don’t come cheap. Sadly, they usually carry some boring look that doesn’t match their hefty price tags. If you’re on a budget, it would be wise if you obtained use-but-good ones from thrift shops. You can then add a fresh coat of paint on them to give them superior aesthetic appeal. 

  1. Adopt a Color-Coded System for Your Files

Source: A Bowl Full of Lemons

Do you have stack of files you keep meaning to put somewhere? Disorganized files make for a cluttered mess that can make it hard for you to work efficiently. Before you over-think your labeling system, think of how a simple color-coded system will do and try it.

  1. Glam up Storage Boxes

Source: First Home Love Life

Small office and craft supplies make for the most clutter in the office. Putting them in storage boxes is the sure way to get them out of the way. When painted and labeled, the storage boxes can double up as storage spaces and decorative pieces. Talk of hitting two birds with one stone!

  1. Make Use of Wall Space

Source: Style By Emily Henderson

Storage boxes can take up lots of floor space. You can free most of that space by utilizing wall space near or above your work desk. With the things you need to put away in mind, you can design simple yet stylish wall pockets to keep all that clutter off your desk.

  1. Utilize Bookcases to Store Magazines

 Source: In My Own Style

Do you have a large collection of magazines that you just can’t find it in your heart to discard? Well, instead of letting them lie around, you can tuck them nicely into bookcases. Wrap the storage boxes with pretty paper to add style. Also be sure to add labels to the boxes to ensure that you’ll retrieve any magazine issue you want with ease.

This post is a collaborative effort by St. Louis Dad.

The Dad’s Guide to Working From Home

Working from home can be fantastic yet it isn’t without its drawbacks.  Indeed, one of the greatest drawbacks is that whilst working from home can be much more convenient, it can make you less focused.

See, the temptation to watch YouTube, Netflix or check up on the land of social media is far too tempting and in addition to this, when faced with the prospect of getting down to work on a sunny day, most dad’s would lack the willpower to resist a family picnic by the river.  Then, there’s the distraction of children watching TV in the background, which whilst providing entertainment so that your kids aren’t disturbing you – the background noise can be distracting.

In summary, there can be a productivity cost when working from home in terms of focus, particularly if you struggle with discipline or concentration.

It’s therefore essential to set up a good space to work in; meaning a space that will allow you to feel comfortable and relaxed yet focused and productive.  You’ll want to create a distraction free environment that allows you to focus, and is ideally, differentiated or perhaps even removed from your actual home.

This space should be yours, and yours alone; meaning that when the door is closed you won’t be disturbed.  It should essentially feel like an annexe to your home rather than part of it, as this way, you’ll feel less distracted and more in “work mode”.

Here are three tips to help you focus when working from home:

  1. SET UP THE SPACE

You’ll want to create a distraction free environment that allows you to focus on work without distraction, therefore decluttering the space that will become your office will ensure a minimalist environment that assists concentration.

  1. FURNISH

You’re going to need a desk, as even if you are working from a laptop you’ll probably want to spread out in order to arrange your thoughts and focus on work.  Similarly, this is your home office and should be tailored to your unique needs – for example, if you are left handed then it’s important to find the best left handed mouse rather than struggle with a conventional mouse.

Also, what you sit in is extremely important, as this chair is likely to get extensive use, perhaps  upwards of eight hours a day. For this reason you’ll want a chair with plenty of padding and decent ergonomic support.

  1. ROUTINE

The most important thing in terms of having a routine, is that it provides structure and keeps you focused – that’s what a lot of people that work from home lack.  They lack the structure and routine of the daily commute, the set lunch hour, and home time. It can help to set yourself a lunch hour between a set time each day and even get dressed for work, as if you were going to the office, as this can put you in a more focused emotional state.

In summary, you want to create a space that allows you to focus.  See, it’s all too tempting for your attention to drift anywhere other than on work; particularly when working from home, and therefore you might need to parent yourself and set up your own version of ‘parental controls’ that keep you focused; there’s a brilliant app called Freedom that offers this type of filtering functionality.

This post is a collaborative effort by St. Louis Dad.

Making More Time For Your Family

In today’s world, where we are bombarded with distractions vying for your attention, it can be difficult to make quality time with your family a priority.  Indeed, even with things like movie nights where the focus should be purely on eating popcorn and watching a film have turned into a multitasking distraction fest.  Like Pavlov’s Dogs, we all seem to be living in reaction to the dings and vibrations of social media alerts and emails coming through every waking hour.

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In such a hectic and fast paced world, it’s important to balance your time whilst also making enough money to survive and nurture your career.  Time is an often overlooked and under-appreciated gift.  We are each blessed with 24 hours every single day, yet many of these hours are spent doing things that aren’t as important or meaningful to our lives as they could be – which is where making more time for your family comes in.

Check out these three time management tips to help you squeeze the most from you working day and free up your time.

1. WORK REMOTELY

If you are able to work remotely, from home, this will enable you to work more flexible hours meaning your work can fit around your family life.  Similarly, if you were to study say a professional microsoft outlook class there’s no need to attend a physical course, as today there’s a plethora of online courses available; anything from vocational short courses to advanced degrees.  The flexibility and time saving nature of these courses can help free up a lot of your time.

2.. ORGANISE YOUR TIME

We all seem to spend far too much time living in reaction to work – trying to fit our lives around work, yet it doesn’t have to be that way; the key to overcoming this is investing in a good planning system.  This way, you are living your life in response rather than reaction – which is a much calmer and productive state to be in.

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3.  THE PARETO PRINCIPLE

The Pareto Principle, also known as the 80/20 rule suggests 20% of our activities account for 80% of the outcome.  In simple terms, you want to focus on what tasks are going to have the greatest impact and get these done first.  Often, we can get lost in the small tasks that create a lot of “busyness” in our lives and detract from the time we need to manage our “business” – be that in a commercial or personal context.

BONUS TIP:  WORK WHEN YOU WORK AND REST WHEN YOU REST

Brian Tracy, a pre-eminent time management expert advocates the idea that you work when you work and rest when your rest; meaning, if you are sitting down to work – ensure you have a singular laser like focus on the task at hand in a distraction free environment.

Today, particularly when working from home, people multitask by working with their laptop on their lap whilst having the TV on in the background, or even dropping in and out of a conversation with their spouse.  By fully working when you work, you can reduce the amount of time you are needing to work – and you’ll get the added benefit of being able to fully rest when you rest.