5 Ways to Organize Your Office with Kids
It can be a bit of a challenge to maintain the order in the home office when you have children traipsing in and out. Especially during the summer when they are home all day long and the entire house seems to fill up with toys and collected items such as rocks and bugs and twigs. However, you can still manage to maintain an organized office, despite all this.
1. Have a separate table in your office. This allows kids to dump their their things somewhere besides your desk when they come in for the inevitable show and tells. Make a point of having everyone take their things out of your office and put them away at the end of each day. You can sweep it all into a box, leave it outside the door and toss anything that has been left for 24 hours, as well, if you are in the mood for something more extreme.
2. Get a locking file cabinet. This is so helpful, especially if your children are at the age where they “borrow” things and you never see them again! Keep your good scissors, your tape, etc. in the locking file cabinet (or a drawer if you don´t have much stuff). Oh, and of course, you can file your paperwork in it as well and not worry about grubby little hands smudging the papers up.
3. Keep a wastebasket handy. And use it. When someone comes to drop off their gum or a candy wrapper, drop it immediately into the garbage, don´t let things build up on your desk. Same goes for empty Coke bottles, etc. that you are using.
4. Have a few old computer things for them to play with. If you can keep the kids distracted with a broken keyboard or a mouse, they won´t be hauling paper out of the desk drawer or flinging paperclips around the room!
5. Have a place for everything. Put your software discs in one place, your manuals in another. When everything has its own place, you will find clean up is much easier. Also, you can teach your kids to put things back in their place and it is easier than trying to find somewhere to fit each item when you don´t have things organized.
What are your tips for organizing your office with kids around?
I really liked #4, “have a few old computer things for them to play with.” My kids are a little older, so now they have their own computer in the room with me (and one of them is usually on it when I am working).