Office Chic

5 ways to make your office space more productive

Around 4 million of us work from home, whether in a dedicated home office or by using your home as a base. There can be huge benefits to working from home like reduced time spent travelling and greater focus, all adding up to increased productivity. But if your home office space is in dire need of decluttering,   these potential benefits can be lost in a sea of disorganisation. We’ve got 5 tips to help you master office organisation and be super productive to boot.

1. Organise the space. Susy Roberts founder of people development consultancy Hunter Roberts said: “If your workspace is cluttered or not designed well you’ll be less productive. If your home storage is far away and you have to repeatedly walk across the room to retrieve essential documents, or if you have to search through piles of paper to find what you need, obviously this will have an impact on the amount you are able to achieve.” Tackle this head on with some strong and sturdy office shelving like our Adjustable Wall Shelving which is plenty big enough to hold all your files, and can also be adjusted to store taller items.
2. Make it creative. When you’re working from home it’s important to keep the creative juices flowing, and one way you can do this is with an ‘ideas board’. Take one of our smaller wall mountable Grid Mesh Panels and fix it right in front of your desk. Use pegs and clips to add images that inspire you, tasks for the day and quotes that you love to keep your motivation levels tip top throughout the day. Its sleek black mesh is perfect for the minimalistic vibe too!
3. Limit the distractions. It’s easy to get side-tracked by other things when you’re working at home, you pop the washing on, potter around and before you know it the morning has gone. Susy suggests having a dedicated, quiet space to work at that is well insulated from external noise and ideally free from mobile phones. If you can’t do without your mobile Susy recommends turning off social media notifications: “When we are distracted it takes 20 minutes to return to the level of concentration we were in before the distraction, so all those Instagram alerts add up to a lot of lost time.”
4. Keep your bits and bobs handy. How much time do we waste searching for a pen or a paper clip? The answer is too many! The ultimate office storage item for little office essentials are little tilt bins. Sit them on your desk, or even mount them on the wall. Then fill them to your hearts content.
5. Sorting the urgent from the non-urgent. When you work from a home office, having structure in your day helps you to feel in control and gives organisation and purpose. Susy’s tips include spending the first half hour of each day prioritising tasks and dealing with anything urgent, and establishing ‘surgery hours’ to deal with non-urgent issues.

Just a few small changes could make your home office into a comfortable, inviting space that will send your productivity levels rocketing.

For more top advice and ideas for organising your office area, please get in touch.