It doesn’t seem possible that it has been almost 18 months since I made the shift to working from home full-time. It looks like it will be several more months before I return to the office, so this feels like a good time to turn our attention in the 52-Week Decluttering Challenge to home office decluttering and organizing.

We made a start on this in March we celebrated Organize Your Home Office Day by clearing out our desktop clutter. This week, we’ll declutter and organize our desk drawers and office supplies.

Are you ready for week 31? Let’s get decluttering!

What is the 52-Week Decluttering Challenge?

In this year-long journey, we’re tackling one task at a time with the goal of cleaning up and organizing our homes. If you’ve just joined us, no worries. You can jump right in with this week’s challenge. Just check out the first two posts in the series to download your free checklists.

• 52-Week Decluttering Challenge
• Week 1 – Easy Decluttering Checklist

You can get easy access to all previous weekly posts on the main Decluttering page.

Week 31 – Decluttering our home office

In the early weeks of the decluttering challenge, I mentioned that we don’t have a junk drawer in our kitchen. That’s true! In our house, the junk drawer is in our home office. The top drawer of the desk is a place where junk just seems to accumulate and it’s a bit of a disorganized mess. We also have a small portable plastic drawer unit in our home office that I included in this week’s decluttering.

Here’s a photo of how things looked before I started.

This week’s decluttering and organizing tips

Here are the tips I have from week 31.

• Free up space by taking things like envelopes, pens, highlighters, glue sticks and other office supplies out of the boxes and packages.
• Label your electronic cables. They are a huge challenge to keep organized and, I don’t know about you but, we always seem to have more cables than we have devices. A few years ago, I started labelling cables with the name of the device they go with. This makes it easier to identify orphaned cables when cleaning up. Last year, as part of the 31 Day Declutter Challenge, I sorted out a big box of cables and donated them to an electronics recycling drive.
• Repurpose empty boxes as dividers in desk drawers to keep small items organized. Boxes from smartphones and tablets work great for this.
• Try a use-it-up challenge for office supplies. In my decluttering, I have found literally dozens of pens! Most of them were giveaways at conferences and meetings because I can never resist a free pen. I have made a commitment to not buy another pen until I use them all up! I may never need to buy a pen again.

Let’s keep in touch! Join my mailing list and I’ll email you when I add a new post.

What I got rid of

Here’s what I got rid of this week. Coincidentally, a grand total of 31 items in week 31!

• 2 empty envelope boxes
• 1 broken pedometer
• 1 memory card to USB adapter
• 7 manuals
• 3 old software CDs
• 2 plastic bags
• 1 luggage tag
• 1 button
• 2 unidentified electronics cables
• 1 pen
• 1 piece of unidentified computer hardware
• 3 pen packages
• 1 drafting kit
• 2 dead batteries
• 1 unopened package of magnetic photo sleeves
• 1 twist tie

And…this week’s candidate for most interesting item. A yellow pages phone book from 2014. I think that must have been the last year the phone company actually printed phone books. It seems so odd now, to think about looking up a business or phone number in a book instead of just searching it online.

And, here’s how things look now.

So that’s week 31 done and our desk drawers are much tidier. Next week, I’m tackling the filing cabinet!

If you have friends or family members who could benefit from a little less clutter in their lives, please share this post and spread the word!

Do you have any tips to keep your desk drawers organized? Tell us below.