Consider your goals before starting to organize a home office

METRO DETROIT — While many people may have a home office for work, hobbies or other purposes, different furniture items and organizing techniques can be useful when trying to maintain the coordination of these spaces.

According to the United States Census Bureau, “In 2023, 13.8% of U.S. workers usually worked from home — more than twice the 5.7% that did so in 2019, despite a decrease from 17.9% in 2021 and 15.2% in 2022.

“In 2019, around 9 million people worked from home in the United States. By 2023, that number had soared to more than 22 million.”

This rise is generally due to the COVID-19 pandemic and related lockdown restrictions, though different organizations have made some efforts to return to in-person work.

“Everybody was working from home, kids were at home, so we had to do a lot of reconfiguring of shared spaces, creating spaces,” said Jade Zygner, owner of O.C.Declutter Solutions, which uses “Organization Concepts to Declutter and Provide Solutions.” “So yeah … I was kind of thrown into the mix and that was certainly home offices.”

With this in mind, some people might still use their home office for work-related purposes as well as other recreational activities.

“I would say, you know, after the pandemic or during the pandemic, it was a lot of remote work and creating home offices in just about any space that we could find a lot of times,” said Janelle Azar, owner of A Meaningful Space LLC. “But now it’s more so about just having a dedicated office space. … I think it’s definitely changed. A lot of people have gone back into, you know, corporate settings versus more of a hybrid or work-from-home lifestyle.”

A Meaningful Space LLC is a business that provides organization support for homes and businesses as well as digital organization services and moving support around the Macomb County Area and Ottawa and Erie counties in Ohio. Azar has been in this sort of professional organization business since 2018.

“So, I actually was in retail management for several years and got a little disheartened by the industry in and of itself, and wanted to find some of the things that I really liked about it and combine it with my own twist, and I love organization and I love working with people, and it just seemed like the perfect fit,” Azar said.

O.C.Declutter Solutions is another business that provides professional organization services around metro Detroit. It was started in 2019 and aims to assist clients in the efforts of sorting, omitting and storing for various spaces.

“I was working, you know, in corporate America, but I wanted to do something to serve my community,” Zygner said. “So, I have always had an innate sense of talent with organizing, setting spaces, curating, things like that. So, I started (the) business, what was supposed to be a weekend kind of gig, and it turned full time and I’m helping all kinds of people, so it’s been great.”

At the start of Azar’s services, she urges patrons to consider their goals for the space before delving further into the process of going through items and setting up the space.

“So we start with the goal. … It’s usually offices or places that are multifunctional and have a lot of different purposes, so we want to think about those things as well,” Azar said. “I have a lot of clients who do some sort of crafting or painting, or sometimes they like to have a reading space in their home office or even a place for kids to come and do homework. So, it’s important to incorporate that into the overall picture and then really start to categorize items that are in the office.”

Categorizing allows clients to see what they have and how much they have, which leads to downsizing or editing and later considering what to do with the items that are leftover.

Zygner’s process for organization is done in stages, starting with getting easy stuff or stuff with very little attachment out of the room. This moves on to creating some new habits in a client’s system.

“So, now we’ve gotten rid of what you don’t need, so now we need to put categories of what you do need,” Zygner said. “So, we’re going to sort like with like, we’re going to kind of create zones, and so that’s how it kind of starts, and then the more you declutter and start to put like with like, the room just sort of reveals itself.”

In terms of furniture and different organization items, Azar recommends utilizing vertical space in the office, either through bookcases, shelving or pegboards as well as three-tier utility carts for crafts and electronics. Cord management can be another big concern for clients.

“One of the other organization jobs I did was for someone who was in the IT (information technology) industry, and in his home office, it was really important to have all the cords corralled,” Azar said.

“There’s different kits that you can get out there that have little sleeves where you can keep cords together or you can also use tags to identify what goes where, which can be really helpful if you’re dealing with kind of like a rat’s nest of tangled cords.”

Zygner recommends shelves, cubbies, paper trays and hooks as well as kanban boards, calendar systems and apps for logistical needs. She also suggests that potential clients do their due diligence when reaching out to professional organizers.

“Everybody has different work styles, so if you call a few different organizers, go with who you connect with,” Zygner said.

For more information, visit ameaning fulspace.com or ocdecluttersolutions.com.