Creating a Home Office Center

Where do you go when it’s time to get down to the business of life? If you’re paying bills at the kitchen table and piling paperwork in odd corners, it’s time to find your center. Take care of the business end of your organized life by setting up a home office to handle scheduling, bill paying, correspondence, and mailing chores.

This specialized activity center can be located in a single room, should you be so lucky, but it can also live in a spare corner or even inside a closet. As you work, you’ll appreciate peace and quiet, so choose a low-traffic location in the home. The space you select should be large enough to hold a desk, a computer workstation, files, and supplies.

Next, consider the roster of activities you’ll carry out in your home office activity center. Paying bills and filing household information are core activities in a home office; scheduling, communications, correspondence, and mailing are allied functions. You may want to combine command central—your life-management center—with the home office area for an all-in-one planning solution.

At the heart of the home office lies the desk, the surface that will hold your work. When setting up a workspace, take personal filing preferences into account. Filers, who work well with information tidied away, need less desk space than pilers, who are most comfortable when they can spread things out. Computer users need space for peripherals such as printers and scanners.

Consider comfort and ergonomics when you select a home office chair. Since you’ll spend considerable time in it, look for a model with appropriate back support and adjustable height.

Climb the walls to keep information in view but off the desk. Bulletin boards, whiteboards, or wall-mounted paperwork organizers keep your desk clear and ready for action. Yes, you’ll want to add decorative touches to the home office, but confine photos and artwork to the walls, where they will inspire you without getting in your way on the work surfaces.

Finally, make space for filing. Whether you use a file drawer contained in a desk, a rolling file cart, or a piler-friendly desktop combination of in and out boxes and a tabletop file holder, you’ll need easy access to your most important paperwork.