Whether you have a dedicated office space in your finished basement or a small cove in your kitchen, the home office is one of the busiest places in your house. It is usually the epicenter of family management—the place where you keep important documents, you do important work and you schedule important events and activities. Shouldn’t this space be organized and inspiring?
Here are four ways to keep your home office organized, eco-friendly and inspiring:
Get Reusable Supplies
Many home office trashcans are filled with checked-off paper to do lists, post it notes and old file folders. Give your office an instant eco-friendly upgrade by investing in reusable products such as erasable binder clips (we love these from PileSmart), file folders (like these from The Container Store) and cool looking dry erase memo boards made of stylish, eco-friendly materials like bamboo (checkout this one from SeeJaneWork.com). The erasable messaging lessens your frustration when you make a mistake or need to change the contents of a folder.
Reuse What You Have
Before tossing out supplies you no longer use, consider reusing them in new and interesting ways. For example, use your old Rolodex to keep passwords for all your accounts or to categorize weekday dinner recipes, place old rubber bands around the ends of a kitchen cutting board to keep it from slipping or repurpose an old bubble wrap mailer into a simple case for your tech.
Head to the Kitchen
Several items you will find in your kitchen will actually help you keep the home office organized. Use ice cube trays as desk organizers or dish drying racks to house folders (the place reserved for utensils makes a great storage spot for pens and pencils). You can also use glass jars (think baby food jars) for storing small materials and hang the magnetic strip usually reserved for knives next to your desk to keep items such as scissors and letter openers handy.
Spend Time at the Flea Market
At GreenHouse Eco-Cleaning we are big fans of flea markets (so much so that we actually had a blog post about some of our favorite NYC fleas) and have found great products to spruce up and organize our home office spaces. Look for mason jars to house writing utensils or paper clips, antique letters and magazines for wall art, old drawer pulls for creating stylish hanging spaces and even vintage serving trays which can be used as a stylish way to gather and display much-needed items like staplers and tape dispensers.
Talk to us: What tricks do you have for creating an inspiring home office space?
image courtesy of flickr/BY CC 2.0