Organizing Your Home Office Closet.

Organizing Your Home Office Closet

If you have a room in your house that doubles as a home office you will most likely need to use the closet in that room as storage for supplies. Having a clean and organized space, even the closet, can make your work day more manageable.

And if your home office may also be a guest room on occasion, you may really need to organize the closet with that in mind.

Below we’ll take a look at some ideas for storing office supplies and more in your home office closet.

Getting Started

The first step is to take everything out of the closet and organize the content into piles. You will need a basket, box, or trash bag for:

• Things that go back in closet.
• Items that go elsewhere in the house.
• Stuff and junk that goes in the trash.

When you are finished, take out the trash and set the stuff that goes elsewhere off to the side, you can take care of it later.

If the closet already has existing shelves, give them a cleaning before putting everything back.

Utilizing the Closet

Once you’ve figured out what goes back inside the closet, take a good look inside the closet. When you have guests that stay a night or two can you give up hanging space for more shelving? If yes, there are many nice shelving units to consider. Not only will they meet your daily needs but that of your guests as well.

Most closets have a top shelf where you can use that space to keep storage boxes of the business papers you don’t access often. Keep papers you do need on shelves that are easily accessible.

If you have a standing shelf in the room you can use for storage and you have a printer that doesn’t get used much, and you don’t want taking up desk space, think about getting a sturdy rolling cart, you can roll the printer in and out of the closet as needed.

Office Supply Storage Ideas

Generally, you will have some of your regular office supplies on your desk or in a drawer of your desk. For extra supplies that will go in the closet, organize your these by putting like items together: copy paper, printer cartridges, notepads, pencils, post-its notes, etc.

Use clear bins, stackable baskets, drawer organizers, compact shelf organizers and other containers to maximize shelf space. Organizers come in various sizes that can accommodate many things. I suggest you label each so you know what is inside, I like the chalkboard labels so I can easily erase and relabel as needed.

You can also keep a clipboard hanging on the inside of the closet door with your main list of supplies and check items you’ll need on your next trip to the office supply store so you don’t forget and run out of supplies entirely.

Storing Guest Room Supplies

If your home office doubles as a guest room, chances are you will need some storage space for a couple of bins with supplies. As we have guests that occasionally stay with us and I don’t need access to these items on a regular basis, I keep them higher on a shelf.

I keep a nice set of sheets and towels separate from the families supply. I keep mine in space saver bags with a dryer sheet so they stay fresh.

If you are like me and your family has a media library, you sometimes find you have duplicate movies. Instead of getting rid of them, I keep them in a container on a shelf for guests to watch in the privacy of the room.

Storing Family Items in the Office Closet

Only keep what really needs to be in your home office, mainly your office items. So before putting any of these items back in the closet, ask yourself a couple of questions:

1. Why are we hanging onto this, do we really need or use it?
2. Is there somewhere else we can store it that is more accessible to our needs?

If you feel you have nowhere else to store games, books or other items from around the house, maybe you need to organize another closet after you are done with the office.

Final Steps

Keep like items together – all my office supplies are easily accessible. Any guest room supplies or family supplies are on higher shelves as they are not used much.

You can even get different colored storage containers or labels for guest and family items then you know at a glance what these containers are meant for.

Once you have everything back in, step back and see how much better your home office closet looks, and if you haven’t organized other closets in the house yet, maybe now you will.