Clutter is the most innocuous-looking enemy of productivity. It is also a great friend of stress and panic. Therefore, the best way to be productive and work without a worry in the world is to intentionally declutter your Work from Home Desk.

This blog will help you focus on how to declutter your workspace desk specifically to take some immediate work-related obstacles out of your way.

These are 8 easy to follow steps that will give you a clean desk and refresh you for all the short, medium and long term tasks at hand. Let’s get started.

1. Take a look at your desk. How much space do you have? Evaluate the way you’ve been using it. Is it too small for your work-related needs? Or is it too big and you’ve been just not using it wisely?

2. Make a list of everything that you absolutely must have on your desk all the time because it makes your work easier or you refer to it constantly. Examples: stationery, laptop/computer, mouse, chargers, phone etc.

Make a list

3. Compare your list of requisites to what you have on your desk right now. Come up with a list of things you’ll include and exclude from now on. For example, if you’ve been keeping books that you don’t get time to read anyway, put it in the list of things to be excluded.

4. Be a little realistic about what you expect to do and in what time frame. Decluttering is not a one-day activity. You might have to focus on one bit a day in order to avoid feeling overwhelmed and giving up or messing it up again.

5. Consciously make way for positivity to avoid cluttering in future. To some people, having a plant around makes sense because it’s their way of bringing nature and greenery into their workspace.

To some people, an award or a framed motivation quote means a lot because it keeps them going. Find out what you’d really value a lot and put it right there to avoid cluttering the space.

framed motivation quote

6. Have some gap between the wall and your desk. You’ll let your space breathe well. Also, you’ll avoid cramming a lot of things on your table. Once the support of the wall is gone, any extra items will start falling off the desk.

Putting space between your desk and the wall is a way of realizing that there is limited space and only the most important and relevant things deserve to be there.

7. Watch the clutter in your work hours. If you do not have fixed working hours, you’ll not have a work routine. Just as you make your bed after you get up in the morning, make your table after you are done working. Very often, clutter is about lack of time management. Because work time tends to spill into other zones like family time or recreational time, work spaces too get blurred and cluttered.

Time

8. Whatever you do, please do not shift your extra desk items into the drawers! Decluttering does not mean cluttering other spaces. Take stock of things you’ve just been shifting from one place to another and find a real space for them so that they do not have to always live homelessly!

Decluttering is a routine – not a one time fix. Do not randomly stubbornly decide what belongs where. It will only frustrate you in the long run. In order to declutter well, do it everyday. Ensure you put things back if you’ve moved them to make space for clients or visitors or any other spontaneous requirement.

So what decluttering mantra do you live by? Do share your hacks and tricks too.