Can your messy home really impact your productivity levels at work? The simple answer is: yes.
As fewer of us commute to work, factoring in how much your everyday environment impacts your emotional state can be insightful. There is plenty of research that shows how working in a cluttered home has an enormous impact on productivity, because the clutter distracts us and we procrastinate on getting our work done. And for those who are still office-based, leaving and going back to an untidy home will have knock-on effects.
It's essential that your home office - or your work space - works for you. And don't overlook the surrounding rooms. Walking into a kitchen that's piled high with dishes while you're on your lunchbreak, isn't going to have a positive effect. However, there are plenty of easy ways to keep on top of organising your home, to create a calm, stress-free environment.
Follow these tips, and watch how you tick more off your to-do list.
Get into daily habits
Look at your schedule every day and see if having the same start and finish times works for you. When does your schedule allow for breaks, lunch, coffee? Just because we work from home doesn’t mean we need to be glued to our screens for eight hours on end.
Use those short bursts of time, or the hours you used to spend commuting into doing some chores around your home, so you don’t create a backlog during the week.
What are things you can do on a daily basis to make your life easier? Why not unload the dishwasher in the morning, put the breakfast items away, wipe the kitchen table and counters, make your bed, put a load of laundry on?
Even if life is hectic or busy, doing these on a daily basis will help you set yourself up for the day. You’ll head into work and meetings with a clear mind, meaning you’ll be able to focus more on the tasks in hand.
Then, do the same at the end of the day - so you wake up to fewer things to do. Daily you need to spend five minutes tidying up your desk, trash in the bin, glasses to the kitchen/dishwasher, office supplies away, paper filed away, etc. Doing this daily reset can help to have a defined cutoff at the end and feel like you have finished for that day.
Declutter to help you to focus
Is the room you’re working in clutter free? Or do you have chaos all around you? This has a huge impact on your stress levels and in turn your emotional state. It means you’re less likely to be able to focus on your work. So why not declutter and tidy up the room you’re working in?
Spend a few minutes adding time for decluttering and organising into your work calendar and don't feel as if this is taking away from your day job. It's very much a valid part of productivity in the same way as taking a course.
Having less mess will help you to focus and process information better, and your productivity will increase.
Labels are your friend!
Boxes, bins and containers can help you to stay organised in your home office (and in your home in general). Keep items you use all the time close by your computer and store away items you don’t use on a regular basis but still need to keep.
Labelling the boxes and bins can help you find items later. A sticky label is fine, but if you want something a bit fancier you could consider getting a label maker to make it look pretty too. If you’re struggling with having cable spaghetti you can use cable organisers, cable ties or cable boxes to help you.
If you are working with lots of paperwork then it’s important to have a filing system that works for you. Filing cabinets, box files, lever arch systems all work, but make sure you use one system and not several. Shred documents you no longer need and make time to put the filing away on a regular basis.
Finding a quiet space for your home office
Decide on the place where your home office will work best. If you’re lucky enough to have a room available in your home, that would be a preferred option so you can close the door on work in the evening.
Also having your desk in a quiet place, can help you from being distracted frequently. If you are working from the kitchen or dining room table then you need a place where all the work paraphernalia like laptops and stationery can go and put away when the working day is over.
Clearing some space in a living room cupboard to store the work laptop, might be the difference between being confronted by work all the time and being able to relax in the evening after work.
How to organise your home office
Next up is the room or area itself. How is the light, sound and temperature in the room? It’s important to get these basics right. When it is too hot, too cold, too bright or sound travels it is hard to concentrate and get the job done.
Make sure to add some plants since seeing green increases productivity. Also look at your furniture. Have you got the right desk, office chair, computer equipment?
Put your office supplies in a desk drawer at hand so they’re not all out. If you don’t use it all, let it go, so you only have what you need at home, especially if space is limited.
Remember, daily tasks are key. Getting into a routine of doing the small jobs as second nature, will mean they don’t turn into bigger issues. And it means you’re living, and working in a clutter-free environment, which will do wonders for your productivity too.
Ingrid Jansen and Lesley Spellman are the UK’s leading authority on decluttering and organising your home as The Declutter Hub, which boasts a top one percent podcast with more than 2.5 million downloads, and a Facebook community of nearly 50,000 members. Their new Bloomsbury Publishing book - Reset Your Home, Unpack Your Emotions And Your Clutter, Step By Step - is out in February 2025. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Reset-Your-Home-emotions-clutter/dp/1399416391
