How to find your ideal home office space plus a peek inside a professional organizer’s office
As a professional organizer, I’ve worked with clients who have called a variety of spaces their home offices. Common spaces like kitchen tables, nooks in bedrooms and sofas tend to be used more often as a workspace for household paperwork than a dedicated room equipped with a large desk and shelving.
Clients are happy for the most part with these common space offices but the resulting paper piles can cause stress since they are visible to guests and can disrupt family life. They dislike having to move papers for mealtime or before guests arrive. Papers are often harder to find after they’ve been moved.
Some of these same clients who work out of a common space actually have a dedicated room that was meant to be their office and they feel they SHOULD use it.
When asked about the reasons for not using a spare room, I’m told they aren’t comfortable with its isolating location, the light or it’s become too cluttered.
We talk about solutions that will allow them to remain where they are most comfortable and focus on setting up a paper system to prevent the paper from piling up and confusion that occurs when papers are moved or stashed before a guest’s arrival. There are many portable options for organizing papers, including rolling file carts, small file boxes and accordion folders, that can be stowed away when needed.
