Home Office

Feng Shui organizational principles aren’t just for bedrooms and front entrances. They can also be applied to your place of work, whether you work from home or outside of the home. A home office in particular is a great place to apply Feng Shui concepts as a well-equipped work space will promote feelings of positive energy, wellbeing, and prosperity.

Cutting clutter to boost productivity

As with any space in your home, the key to producing a high-powered home office environment is to free it of clutter. Of all the spaces in your home, the office is likely one of the spaces in which the most clutter builds up. If you’re like most of us, you have stacks of old magazines, piles of bills waiting to be filed, boxes of photographs requiring sorting, workout equipment that rarely gets used, and plenty of other miscellaneous stuff. These are the things of home office nightmares.

 At Teresa’s Family Cleaning, we almost always start a room makeover by creating several boxes for sorting through the clutter in a space, including “Keep” (items that will stay in the living room), “Give Away” (things you no longer want but that are still useful), “Recycle/Trash” (for broken and obsolete items), “File” (items that need to be taken to their rightful place in your home office), and “Store” (those things that belong in long-term storage). Put nearly everything in your office into one of these boxes, with the exception of furniture and larger items and then deal with them accordingly.

Of course, you’ll also want to clean your office from top to bottom, including washing all hard surfaces, steam cleaning carpets and upholstery, cleaning drawers and cupboards, and so on. You now have a clear palette on which to begin building your Feng Shui home office.

Feng Shui office organization

Before putting everything back into your office, be sure you’ve got some systems and principles in place that will help to maintain a clutter-free, organized work environment for many months or years to come. We’ve collected the top tips for making your home office as productive as possible:

  • Filing organization: Purchase an automatic labeller and regular files (we assume you already have a filing cabinet, but if not, get one of those as well). Organize and label all existing paper materials and file alphabetically in your cabinet. Then any time something new comes in, make a practice of handling it only once: deal with it right away and file it. And if no folder exists for that item, quickly make one with your labeller.
  • Minimize visual clutter: There are numerous small items that go into an average office. Hopefully by now you’ve weeded out the things that are not necessary, but what’s left can still block positive energy, so find ways to store it out of sight using cabinets, attractive boxes, baskets, and closet space.
  • Orientation is important: You’ll want to place your computer facing southeast to generate income, but remember that your back should never be to the door. Instead, putt your desk in the corner away from the door facing the entrance if possible.
  • Wire control: An office will inevitably have wires and cables connecting the computer, printer, monitor, mouse, fax machine, and more. But these, too, impede efficiency, so find ways to organize and hide them as much as possible.
  • Flowing water: A fountain can be an excellent way to stimulate positive energy as flowing water tends to uplift the mood and calm the mind.

One of the golden nuggets of office organization is to leave your desk uncluttered at the end of your work session. By cultivating clean desktop policy, you can leave your work space feeling calm and come back to it without a feeling of dread and frustration.

©2010 Teresa’s Family Cleaning

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Teresa Ward, President of Teresa’s Family Cleaning and New York State’s Small Business Entrepreneur of the Year is often considered Long Island’s foremost authority on cleaning homes and businesses to create a cleaner and healthier environment for all. Our highly sought after, award winning weekly newsletter provides timely cleaning tips and other important Long Island information and charitable events for homeowners, businesses and not-for-profits. Visit us at http://www.TeresasFamilyCleaning.com to sign up and receive your copy today!