Desk Organization Ideas (Simple Tips For Whipping Your Workspace Into Shape!)

Need a few desk organization ideas to whip your messy workspace into shape? Whether it’s a desk in your home or you’re back to working at the office, it’s easy for your desk mess to get a little out of control. Today I’m sharing my favorite desk organizing ideas from tips on corralling your desk cords to organizing desk drawers, taking charge of paper clutter, and more. Let’s get to it… (post includes affiliate links – full disclosure statement available {here})

Ideas for Corralling Your Cords

In our previous home we had a second workspace in our family room where we added a built-in desk to the open space between our bookcases. It’s such a nice place to work because of the view out the window (and good lighting for Zoom calls 😉) and because our family room has a door that allows us to close it off from the rest of the house when needed. It became Jeff’s daily work-from-home spot for the last year that we lived here:

When we first put this desk space to use, our desktop was a cluttered mess of cords with a power strip sitting on top of it. Our solution for corralling the cord clutter was to buy {this wall mount power strip} which has four regular outlets plus four USB outlets. We mounted it under the desktop high enough up that all you see is the cords stretching down to the outlet below it.

It comes with small screws that I used to mount ours but if you don’t want to add any holes {these Command picture hanging strips} should also do the trick!

Mounting a power strip would work with most traditional freestanding desks too – the desk just needs to have some type of “lip” around the edge to keep it out of sight. If needed, you can use {these Command cord clips} to run the power strip cord along the inside edge of your desk to get it close to an outlet to plug into and to keep any extra lengths of cord tucked up where you can’t see them.

I labeled our cords using {these Velcro cable labels} (medium size) which makes it so easy to know what cord goes to what without having to trace back a cord when you want to unplug it. You can write directly on them with marker or stick printed address labels on (FYI, I ended up having to add a dab of glue to each address label because they didn’t stick well on their own):

I used the same cable labels when labeling the cords behind our TV so we know what’s what at a glance:

Another idea for corralling desk cords is a simple one that I used for my daughter’s desk when her cables kept falling behind it. I added one of {these adhesive cable holders}:

You simply stick it to the surface of the desk and then the cords easily clip right into the holder and stay in place (no more finishing them out from behind the desk!) for when they’re needed:

One last idea to help tame cord clutter and have a more organized desk is to use an electronics charging station. We have USB outlets inside of one of our kitchen drawers that we use for charging but after I got an Apple Watch and two of us got AirPods for Christmas, we needed more charging space. I bought {this charging station} and it’s been awesome. We can charge a set of AirPods, an Apple Watch, iPad and up to 3 phones at once:

Most charging stations don’t include the charging cords or actual USB charger but this one includes everything you need except the Apple Watch charger (which comes with the watch). It’s a nice small size and it keeps all of the cord clutter inside the charging station where you can’t see it:

so the desktop in between the shelves in our home office stays nice and neat:

Sources: Gold ceiling light  |  Rug  |  Desk (similar)  |  Wingback chair (similar)  |  Cross base tabletop planter  | Gray storage boxes – IKEA  |  Black & white stacked canisters  | Sunburst mirror  |  Acorn basket set  |  Pagoda – HomeGoods  |  Curved basket (similar)  |  Bust planter – thrifted  |  3-tier woven tray

 

Divide Up Your Desk Drawers

Another favorite desk organization idea is to tame the clutter in your drawers using drawer dividers/bins. They are key for getting your drawers organized and KEEPING your drawers neat and organized too. An organized drawer = more storage space! My main “desk” drawer in our previous home was actually in our kitchen island. Both of our deep top island drawers have a secondary shallow drawer within them and I use one for wraps, foils, and baggies and the other for my desk supplies – it’s basically my hidden kitchen command center:

Sources: Counter stools  |  Pendant lights  |  Vases – no longer available  |  see {this post} for all other kitchen details and sources

I used {these Poppin desk organizers} to divide the space up so that everything in my desk has a home. The beauty of it is that when you’re returning something to the drawer, it goes right back in its designated spot and keeps things neat – I organized this drawer over a year ago and other than needing to spend some time cleaning out extra papers in my file folders it looks pretty much the same as the day I first organized it:

Sources: Large accessory trays in dark gray (x2)  |  Decorative file folders  |  Divided organizer tray  |  2″ binder ring (for hair bands)  |  Medium accessory trays (x2)  |  Stapler and tape dispenser  |  Business card holders (x2)  |  Acrylic post-it holder  |White post-it notes  |  12″ Drawer pull (Golden champagne finish)

I have a full post on this hidden kitchen command drawer that you can check out {here} if you want more details.

I organized the desk drawer in our home office with drawer dividers too, using two sets of {these drawer organizers}. Each set has a variety of sizes that I was able to play around with until I found a good arrangement to fill up almost the whole drawer:

And here’s my trick to keep my dividers from shifting toward the back of the drawer when it’s opened and closed – I adhere a few round cord Command clips to the bottom of the drawer so that they’re up tight against the back dividers and lock them in place:

It looks like they might not make these exact cord clips anymore but {these clear clips} work well for the task too! Another option is to use an expandable drawer divider like {this one} along the back of your dividers if your drawer isn’t too wide (most dividers don’t expand past 22″). You could also stick some of {this removable museum gel} on the bottom of your organizers.

Tame Your Desk Top With a Tray

It’s unreasonable to expect to have every single piece of paper neatly put away at all times it’s not in use so another desk organization idea I rely on is using trays. They are the easiest and quickest way to corral clutter and look stylish doing it! I have trays for cooking essentials next to our stove, coffee table accessories in our family and living rooms, and office supplies on our home office desk.

My desk tray holds a decorative box (with paper clips, a pen, flash drive, & my scanner cord),

my calendar, tape dispenser, file folder with papers I’m working on, and my handheld scanner (more on my scanner in just a bit!):

At the end of the day, I simply round up all the papers that litter my desk and put them in the file folder on my tray. My exact tray isn’t available anymore but here are some other rectangular trays that would be good choices for corralling your desktop clutter in the prettiest of ways:

Sources: 1. Tava rattan tray  |  2. Water hyacinth serving tray  |  3. Mirror tray  |  4. Scalloped edge tray  |  5. Blue wood serving tray  |  6. Round handled rattan tray  |  7. Ash wood tray  |  8. Blue eco tray

Take Charge of Paper Clutter

To me, the hardest part of desk organization is taming the paper clutter because it can become overwhelming so quickly. Papers generally fall into one of these three categories – (1) papers you need to act on or do something with, (2) papers that you no longer need, and (3) papers that you need to keep for the future (like tax documents).

For the papers you need to act on or do something with it’s pretty simple – either do what you need to do with them or file them in a to-do file you check daily (I keep mine in the kitchen desk drawer I shared earlier). For papers that you no longer need, don’t let them pile up to the point that they overwhelm you – shred or recycle them daily. And for papers that you need to keep for the future, SCAN them!

I bought {this handheld scanner} a few years back and it has helped SO much with organizing our paperwork and eliminating paper clutter. I don’t even need to leave my desk chair to use it, I simply hook it up to my laptop and scan the papers through.

The beauty of it is that I can then get rid of all that paperwork! For things like taxes, Jeff and I have a shared Google Drive folder that we upload our scanned papers to. We’ve also gotten better about saving online documents into our shared folders instead of printing them and filing them like we used to. Just be sure to always keep your laptops/computers backed up! Make this your 2021 resolution if you don’t do this already – I’ve tried several services and Backblaze (more details {here}) is my favorite. My laptop is backed up daily without me having to do a thing and it’s easy for me to access any files I’d need if my laptop was broken or lost.

Since mail is such a huge contributor to paper clutter, also be sure to check out {this post on taming mail clutter} where I share all of my tips from lessening the amount of junk mail you get in the first place to sorting and clearing out your incoming mail pile each day.

Some Favorite Desk Essentials

I’ll wrap things up with my favorite home office essentials – some are organizing essentials I’ve already shared in this post, but I have several other must-haves too. They include a desk pad which both protects your desk and makes using a mouse so much easier than a small mouse pad (we have {this desk pad} which is available in 3 size and 15 color options). I’ve also got to include Jeff’s favorite Christmas present – I bought him {this Ember smart coffee mug} (also available {here} and {here}) as a splurge gift and he literally tells me daily how much he loves it! He’s an all-day coffee drinker and this mug keeps his coffee at the perfect temperature he preselects. It maintains that temp the whole time it’s on the base and for an hour and a half at a time off the base. All of my other home office essentials are rounded up here:

Sources: Desk pad  |  Marble & brass desk lamp – no longer available  |  Handheld scanner  |  Keyring flash drives  |  Mountable power strip  |  Ember smart coffee mug  (also available {here} and {here})|  Electronics charging station

I hope you all enjoyed today’s post! I’ll see you back on the blog next week! In the meantime, if you want tips for organizing other spaces in your home, check out my post sharing 20 of my favorite home organization ideas.