Before we declutter and organize your home office space, let’s get clear about what that space is.

What is your ‘home office’? A spacious room? A pokey corner? A table and filing cabinet?

If the space isn’t ideal, how can you improve it?

Can you:

• Change to a different room that’s more spacious?
• Free up an additional area that’s rarely used, or used for something less important than your home office needs?
• Replace one shared desk with two smaller ones?
• Reclaim space that’s been taken over by laundry, toys, ironing, rarely-enjoyed crafts and projects, dust-covered exercise equipment, random stuff that has no home of its own?
• Add a filing cabinet, shelves, or drawers?

Once you’ve settled on the space to call your home office, make peace with it. If your space is limited, then to stay uncluttered and organized your stuff must also be limited.

Just in case you missed that, here it is again:

If your space is limited, then your stuff must be limited.

If your home office space matters to you but you’re not prepared to allocate space away from less important areas, then that’s a choice. If you allow laundry and toys and a shrine to decoupage to take over the whole area, then that’s a choice.

You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to, but recognize your choices. Make peace with them. I can help you declutter and organize your space, but I can’t change your space – only you can. There’s simply no magic solution to fitting a lot of stuff into a little space and feeling organized. Unless you have a mini and a lot of clowns.

So before we move on to Step 2, take some time to consider your home office space options.

If there are changes listed above you can make now, do that. I’ll wait.