Have a Home Office? Learn How to Maximize Your Space

In today's upwardly mobile environment, the ability to move around and shift is crucial. Oftentimes, working professionals are burning the midnight oil at home, not at the office. For this, it's important to have a place that is functional, organized and private (if possible).

Here are some top ideas from wikihow.com on how to find, keep and organize your home office:

Find the perfect spot. Part of keeping organized in a home office is ensuring that you have a suitable place set aside to serve solely as your home office. It's not going to be effective if you're borrowing space anywhere, such as the kitchen table, or your child's desk while they're at school. Instead of "nomading" about the house in search of the perfect space, select one spot that is out of the way of pedestrian traffic, unaffected by noise or other sources of interference, and can be a permanent home office base for you. Purchase a table or desk (depending on your needs) that can be used just for your work tasks.

Check that everything is ergonomically suitable for you. It's easy to become despondent and start making a mess when your working arrangements make you feel uncomfortable. A chair that makes your legs feel deadened or a table that just doesn't have the space needed will soon have you wandering off and trying out other parts of the house to improve your comfort levels.

Remove the superfluous. Clutter will make it impossible for you to remain organized in a home office. Being at home, you're at greater risk of things "migrating" into your work zone that have nothing to do with your work. Deal with this by getting rid of every object that is not useful for work. Take a close look at what you're dealing with and define carefully what you need and what you don't.

After removing the superfluous, permit yourself three beautiful objects to grace your workspace and inspire you. Keep it at three or less always, no more. If you want to rotate the inspirational things, then feel free to do so.

Manage the cables. You've probably found out through experience that the tangled cords under your desk are great at achieving three things: they trap dust balls, they make you look disorganized and they snag your feet, occasionally pulling over something else in the process. Don't live with that rat's nest of cables lurking behind your workstation; even if you've never thought it was possible to straighten out your office cables, give it a try.

Go wireless. Now that you've got that mess under your desk cleared up, think about getting rid of the cord clutter on your work surface. Wireless keyboards and computer mice are terrific gadgets that will free up both your space and your movements. Just imagine not having to tug the cord of your computer mouse free ever again.

Keep your printer off your workspace desk or table. Purchase or find a suitable printer table for it instead. If this small table or cabinet has shelves for storing printer paper and cartridges, this is even better.

Ensure adequate lighting. A home office needs good lighting to help you see properly at all hours of the day. If you're stuck in a basement or somewhere that's darker than normal, consider using a daylight bulb to brighten up your working space and to help you feel that the light is more natural.

Label everything. Stop squinting at the handwritten chicken-scratch on your file tabs and invest in a label maker instead. Having a label printer around will not only keep the contents of your filing cabinet looking neat and professional, it's also very handy for organizing discs, office supplies and storage cabinets.

Sort. Sort through papers and shred the ones you don't need. We've all dealt with it: the mountain of paper that comes from repeatedly putting off sorting through junk mail and paperwork. You have it in your power to keep that paper from piling up in the first place.

Straighten up at each day's end. Before you call it a day, do a small tidy up. By taking just a few minutes to put everything back in order, you're making a useful transition out of your workday, and ensuring that your office will be a much more pleasant place to return to the next day.

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