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When you work from home, your home is your office and vise versa!  Since there’s so much overlap between the two, it can be easy to see how clutter can accumulate in your work from home job.

While clutter is part of the norm in most people’s lives, it can truly reduce productivity and create a lot of mental and visual stress. When everything is kept organized and clutter-free, you’re free to focus on work.  Create some of the simple systems below for organizational, clutter-reducing tips that will keep your home office stress free!

Close Your Tabs

You know all those tabs you keep open in your browser?  Close them!  Keeping tabs open not only makes your computer run slower, it adds mental and visual clutter.  It can be stressful to open your window and realize that you have a million things “to do” or “to read” that have been sitting there for weeks.

Instead of collecting tabs, send yourself a daily or weekly email with all links of things to do or read.  Get in the habit of clearing your tabs on a very consistent basis – it will both visually and literally clear up space in your mind and on your computer.

Keep it in One Space

If at all possible, keep all of your notes, appointments, calendars, presentations, and so on in one space.  Google Docs is a great place to utilize documents, spreadsheets, and presentation slides, and you can integrate Google Calendar to be all under one program.

Another great tool to use is Dropbox, since it allows you to keep all of your files organized and in one place.  The more you can keep things together, the better! It’s easier than searching around endlessly for files, and it keeps them from clogging up your computer’s processing speed.

Spruce Up Your Computer

Since we’re in the theme of organizing, spring cleaning your computer is important to run speed and your personal organization.  We already discussed keeping browser tab numbers down, but there are other ways to keep your computer running quickly – and yourself organized in the process.

Another common place of overwhelm is the desktop.  Make it a habit to clean off your desktop at the close of your workday, everyday.  This way, when starting your day tomorrow, you’re not seeing tons of icons and files all over your screen.

Lastly, organize your files.  When you get into the habit of clearing off your desktop daily, organizing files will become even more crucial! Create names for files that are easy for you to remember, and schedule time for filing each week.  In the end, removing computer and office clutter doesn’t need to be tough or time-consuming.  Making some time for these tasks each week is just another key to work from home success!

(Image courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net)

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