26 Ways to Organize Office Desk for Best Productivity

Have you been wondering how to organize your office desk recently? It might seem simple, but there are some tricks you can use to organize your desk in order to get the most out of the space. Ensuring that your desk space is conducive to boost productivity can help you to work harder, longer, and reduces the risk of you getting distracted while you work.

A well-organized desk space is also helpful if you want to maintain better posture. There are some ergonomic features that can greatly improve the way you work, but you need sufficient desk space to use them. This is just another reason to keep your desk tidy and organized.

Worst of all is probably losing or misplacing things due to your desk being too chaotic. This can be incredibly frustrating, and it is also fairly easy to prevent. We’ve listed some of our top ways to organize your desk, as well as the advantages of having an organized desk ideas.

A cluttered workspace leads to an unorganized mind, most of the time. You will feel more motivated to get to work after you organize the office desk and look more welcoming. You won't have to clear piles of papers and junk out of your way to do your work. Whether you have a makeshift office in your living room, a small corner that's been converted into your home office, or simply one of those cubicles in your office, check out these clever ways to organize desk for a simple but highly effective approach to tidiness.

What Kind of Desk is Best for Productivity?

If you want to make organization and productivity a priority, then some types of desks are better than others. Generally speaking, a desk that helps you maintain good posture is also going to help you be more productive. Studies have shown that sitting or standing properly makes you feel more positive and can help you work harder and longer. 

As such, choosing an office desk that has a number of ergonomic features is the best choice in this area. It’s also important that you have enough desk space, regardless of the type of work you do. If your desk feels cramped or chaotic, this can be very distracting. It becomes much easier to misplace things or get confused, and it definitely isn’t conducive to productivity. 

Another advantage of having an ergonomic desk for productivity is that you can remain at eye level with your computer monitor. Staying at eye level is more comfortable and better for your posture, and it’s also better for your productivity. When you don’t have to strain your neck to engage with your work, becoming immersed and entering a flow state is much easier. 

How a Standing Desk Can Help

When discussing ways to organize your office desk, it’s also important that you have a great desk to begin with. Your desk is the springboard for your organization, so it should be supportive in this area. Working at a standing desk like SmartDesk 2 (Standard) can often make an enormous impact on your productivity.

Standing while working has been found to make an enormous impact on how productive and energetic you are. In addition, standing is healthier, both metabolically and in relation to your posture. Maintaining better posture doesn’t just help you work more efficiently, but it also reduces the strain on your body. It brings both mental and physical health to users.

In addition, standing while working is a great way to limit the impacts of a sedentary lifestyle or job on your health. If you work at a desk, chances are your job is highly sedentary. A sedentary lifestyle puts you at increased risk of certain serious illnesses and conditions, like diabetes, blood clots, and heart disease.  

While you might not be able to give up your desk job, you can turn your desk job into a boon for your health by simply standing while you work. Standing for much of the day dramatically reduces your risks of these lifestyle illnesses, and it isn’t much more taxing on the body than sitting once you’ve adjusted to it.

Boost Your Productivity

Many standing desks have a practical, minimalistic layout while offering plenty of desk space. This is an important feature because it helps prevent your desk getting crowded and chaotic. Part of organizing computer desk space is ensuring that you have enough room for your laptop and other necessary tools and removing what you don’t need. Having a minimal desk setup is a great way to remind yourself to keep things simple. 

Better Posture, Better Outlook

Science has found that maintaining good posture actually makes you feel more positive and productive. If you feel more positive about the work that you’re doing, you’re much more likely to be able to work longer and harder without feeling burnt out. Using standing desks naturally encourage great posture, making them the perfect choice if you truly want to hack your productivity.

A Clean Desk Has Many Benefits

Improve mental stability

The best way to organize office desk is to avoid clutter as much as possible. Your drawers, trays, and desk are jam-packed with useless papers. Sort them out right away and organize the computer desk. Take the pressure off. You've already got enough on your plate. You will never lose a document or file when you know, and you will feel more secure and less stressed. Your clients' client files, memos, reports, and documents must be archived in an organized manner. Be sure you do not already have a paper copy, which would constitute a duplicate when organizing desk space.

Increase productivity

An employee searches for information on average for two hours per day, according to a study. You can make your employees more productive and organized by implementing a clean desk policy to show them how to organize an office desk. Instead, they could use electronic documents, allowing them to access information more rapidly and save your business money on paper, toner, etc.

More likely to sleep better

The decluttering of your office can improve your sleep and mental stability, increase your focus and reduce your stress. A tidy office environment helps you relax and wind down more easily before bed, resulting in a better sleep routine.

Improve focus

In addition to providing peace of mind to employees, a clean workplace gives a positive impression to visitors. Taking pride in their efficient physical systems allows them to boost confidence, thereby improving worker morale. Unorganized workplaces make it difficult to focus clearly on tasks, projects and set priorities. You can also expect it to impact your psychological, emotional, and professional well-being negatively.

Reduce stress

Employees who feel organized are less stressed. Being aware of where everything is located improves their efficiency and control, which is beneficial to their health.

Our 26 Tips to Organize Desks

There are so many best ways to organize a desk at work. Even implementing some small, simple tricks can make an enormous difference to your desk layout. In turn, this can make it much easier for you to stay productive and organized throughout your workday. Here is a list of 26 of our favorite ways for your desk organization. Let's learn how to organize your desk with us!

1. Use a Filing Cabinet

One of the main reasons that desks get crowded and chaotic to begin with is because we lack storage space for our possessions or tools. If your desk doesn’t come with drawers or storage space, this doesn’t mean you need to crowd everything on the desk space. One of the best ways to organize your office desk is by keeping things simple, after all.

You should invest in a quality filing cabinet that is designed to be easy to use and navigate. This filing cabinet by Autonomous has multiple drawers for optimum storage, and its wheels make it easy to move around. It’s small and light enough that you can fit it into any part of your office, but large enough to store the supplies and possessions that you need most while you work. 

2. Try a Cable Tray

Another primary reason that desks become crowded and messy is a tangle of wires coming from different devices. In the digital age, it’s almost impossible not to use wires to begin with. After all, your computer runs on electricity, and you might have other desk accessories that use power, too.

This is when you should try working with a cable tray. It is a good item for you to organize your computer desk. A well-made cable tray is an inexpensive way for you to manage all of your cables and keep them away from your workspace. If your cables are out of the way, you should find that you get a much clearer head and that it becomes easier for you to work and stay organized.  

3. Anti-fatigue Mats for your Standing Desk

Standing desks are one of the best options if you want to stay organized and motivated. However, they can be challenging to adjust to at first. If you find that you’re getting tired at your standing desk, this doesn’t mean you need to give up on it, though. You can try a range of accessories to make your standing desk more comfortable and natural to use. 

An anti-fatigue mat is one of the best accessories to use with a standing desk. With an anti-fatigue mat, you can make working at a standing desk far more comfortable for your legs and feet and dramatically reduce your level of fatigue throughout the workday. A good anti-fatigue mat like this offering from Autonomous is anti-slip and sturdy, so you can count on it lasting for a long time. 

4. Install a Monitor Arm

If you work with a large monitor or several monitors, it can be challenging to stay organized and maintain good posture. One of the easiest ways to change this is by installing a monitor arm to organize your computer desk. A monitor arm lets you precisely control the height and placement of your monitor. If you need peak productivity while you work, then a monitor arm is definitely the way to go. 

5. Go Paperless

No matter how organized you are as a person, it can be tricky keeping track of piles of paper. If you want to organize an office desk, eliminating paper altogether is one of the quickest and most dramatic ways to keep things neat and tidy. Paper is arguably becoming less and less practical today, and you should find that there are plenty of apps and programs you can use when you go paperless. It is also a way to become a more eco-friendly workspace.

6. Use a Calendar

Keeping track of dates and appointments can be challenging. Why leave everything up to your memory? Installing a calendar over your desk space is a quick and cheap way for you to easily remember commitments and appointments without any dramatic changes. 

7. Try a Floor Lamp

If you’re really short on desk space, then having a lamp on your desk might be more of a hindrance than a help. You can try installing a larger floor lamp that reaches over your desk for better office desk organization. It’s usually fairly easy to find floor lamps that are tall and adjustable, and you can install it so that it reaches over your desk, illuminating your workspace without taking up any room. 

8. Organized Desk with Drawer Dividers

Drawers might seem useful, but they can often get very cluttered and disorganized. If you’re serious about office desk organization, then you should try using drawer dividers. You can sort your drawers into different categories, and this makes it much easier not to lose pens or sticky notes when you need them.  

9. Does it Spark Joy?

Marie Kondo is well-known for suggesting that we shouldn’t get too attached to items that fail to ‘spark joy’ in us. When it comes to your desk, you shouldn’t be afraid to be picky about what you display. If an item doesn’t spark joy, don’t keep it on your desk. This is a simple way to ensure that your desk space is enjoyable for you, and that you don’t use it as a quick storage solution for random items. 

10. Try Trays

Office trays can be small and nifty organization machines. If you’re wondering how to organize your office desk, then you should try using a stack of office trays. They don’t take up much room, and they can be a great way to prevent clutter from building up. 

11. Use a Desk Organizer

Desk organizers are easy to DIY from spare boxes, and they can make a huge difference to how easy it is to find things at your desk, as well as giving you more space to work. 

12. What About Floating Shelves?

If you have empty wall space behind or above your desk, using floating shelves is a fantastic way to maximize this and give yourself more storage space. You can store supplies on your floating shelves, which is a great way to prevent clutter from building up on your desk while still having access to everything you need. 

13. Keep Stations 

Separating your desk into stations can be a great way to keep it organized if you have enough space. In fact, it’s one of the most effective ways to organize desk space. For example, if your work involves drawing and working at a computer, you can use one half of your desk for drawing and the other half for computer work. You can also keep relevant supplies for these tasks separate, too. 

14. Color Coordinate

If you often find yourself losing or misplacing stationary, then you might want to try separating it by color. Color coordination might take a little while, but it’s one of the best ways to organize your office desk and your stationery. 

15. Label Everything 

Labels are an organizer’s best friend. When you keep labels on your supplies, possessions, and important materials, it becomes so much easier to know what is what. You really can’t go overboard with labeling. If you want to maximize the organization that labeling allows, you can also color coordinate your labels to make them especially easy to follow. 

16. Be Ruthless!

When it is necessary to organize desk at work, you really need to be honest with yourself. Do you actually need everything on your desk? How much of your desk space is wasted on things you don’t use? Removing these from your desk doesn’t mean you need to throw them away. You can simply relocate them to another part of the house or store them. Your desk isn’t a cupboard or storage space, after all. Don’t be afraid to be ruthless!

17. Create Personal Space

An assortment of acrylic organizers will help you get rid of desk drawer clutter. Organize sticky notes, cards, and flash drives in separate compartments so you can grab them easily.

Keeping your home office organized is more than just keeping your desk tidy. With nearby cubbies, hooks, and baskets, you'll have plenty of space to work with no clutter on your desk.

18. Do a Daily Wipe Down

The Clorox Company conducted a study that found most toilet seats and keyboards have more germs in them than most computer office desks. Regularly cleaning your workspace and organizing an office desk can keep you healthy.

19. Do a Weekly Deep Clean

Lamps, pencil cups, and knickknacks are essential for every desk, but having them strewn across your desktop makes it hard to concentrate. Your computer needs a clear space, and there should be plenty of space on your desk to write and spread out. That’s why should often organize desk.

20. Install Floating shelves

Install a tracking system overhead and mount your desk directly to the wall instead of overtaking a small space with bulky furniture. You should attach as many shelves as necessary to store your craft supplies, books, and other office essentials.

21. Make an organization station

It would help if you hung organizers straight to the wall, so you have enough space on the top of your desk for reading, writing, and working. Put everything you need for the office in mason jars and put a calendar on your corkboard. With a fun and functional DIY pegboard wall, you can add floating shelves, hanging baskets, and pretty decor to your home office. It combines storage with art.

22. Concentrate on One Task at a Time

Instead of multitasking, try to do one thing at a time, whether your work tasks or even clean up your desk or install a bamboo desk organizer. Ultimately, you get a lot of things done and without any errors. Juggling too many tasks at one time will leave you tired and unfocused.

23. Finish Tasks ASAP

When you take up a task, work on it until it's completed before moving on to the next one. You can let small tasks pile up quickly, even though this may seem obvious. There is a rule to avoid procrastination in daily life, stating that if a task is just a matter of two minutes, do it. You can adjust this rule for your office life, so you tell yourself that if you can complete it in under fifteen minutes, you should finish it now.  

24. Go Digital

You can reduce clutter by using less paper, documents, and folders and switching to digital devices instead. This includes a laptop, tablet, and PC containing all your work, files, and folders in a digitized format, and you organize wires behind a desk.

Files and old paperwork can take up a lot of space on your desk and in your office, but most likely, they are important, which is why you keep them. Consider letting them go. You can scan the document to create a digital file if you do need to keep it.

This will free up so much space in drawers and filing cabinets, giving you more storage space than you would have expected. In addition to this, digital files provide an easier way to search and find the document quickly. Even if you must store physical copies of paperwork, you may not need to access them often if you store them somewhere else.

25. Get a Trash Can

Keep a trash can handy for when you need to throw out small paper, pens, and other items you don’t need. The result of this home office organization tip is that you get rid of things you don’t need immediately instead of letting them collect on your organized desk. 

26. If you don't use a pen or pencil, throw it away

Organize your to-do lists, pens, and notebooks by making an office desk setup organizer out of wooden boxes. Put your notes, documents, and supplies in an acrylic tray to keep them tidy. To ensure that your organized desk does not become your home's catch-all spot, follow Marie Kondo's lead and only keep items that spark joy.

Desk Setup Ideas for The Best Organized Look

People with cluttered workspaces tend to have cluttered minds. You will be motivated to work harder by having an organized desk because it will look more welcoming and because you will not have piles of paper and other junk in the way. Find out how to get an organized desk with these simple and highly effective desk organization ideas; whether you're working in your home office, a small corner becomes your makeshift workspace or a cubicle at work.

Your office supplies, documents, and planning materials can all have a designated space or monitor stand organizer. You can complete this by adding a pegboard, DIY tools, and strong dividers, making it easier to keep track of everything. You can have a well-organized office by taking a few simple steps to keep productive and on top of the more vital task: running your business. You can organize your desk by following these tips to show you how to organize your desk. Here are some ways to organize an office desk!

Determine your workflow and then build around it

Left-to-right tendencies are common among many people. Some of the best-organized desk ideas mean keeping telephones, e-mails, and computers on the left, a free workspace in the middle, and outgoing items like staplers and documents on the right. It depends on how you work and how your office desk organization is. Find the arrangement that feels natural and streamlined to you and experiment with it until you find it.

Designate dedicated task zones

Stress can increase when you are trying to sign or spread-out paperwork and don't have any free space. Establish a no-parking zone on your desk but put all smaller items in a computer desk organizer, and don't let anything sit there when you're not working on it. You may need to think vertically to clean up your office, such as getting a wall shelf and using it for non-essential items like files.

Get rid of visual clutter

Even if your desktop is orderly, if you have too many desk gadgets competing for your attention, you may not be as productive as you would like. Sticky notes, for instance, are popular among some workers, who keep office gadgets on their desks and next to their computer monitors. It's okay to keep a few on hand. It becomes challenging to focus on what is truly important when there are too many distractions.

Toss the things you don’t need or use

Get rid of any non-essential items, empty your closets, shred documents. Organize your space. Do you have anything you haven't used in a while? Don't try to tackle too many areas at once. Repair it or throw it away if it doesn't work. If it hasn't been used in months, and you can't see any reason why you'd use it again, discard it. The same goes for furniture, supplies, equipment, etc. If you have knick-knacks, plants (real or artificial), and decorations in your office that look shabby and are covered with dust, they should be cleaned.

Add a few personal and meaningful touches

You do not need to sterilize your workspace, even if it is clean. Look at everything you love. Hang a few meaningful objects on your wall, bulletin board, or desktop - photos, cartoons, inspirational quotes, or your favorite action figure. You want to keep your desk from looking too messy, but don't clutter it up too much, or your desk will look unprofessional.

Reduce paper use by going digital

A cluttered workspace is still mostly caused by paper. Take advantage of your computer's calendar, to-do list, and memo pad by synchronizing them with your smartphone for greater convenience and accessibility. Digital productivity tools allow you to set up notifications for meetings, appointments, and tasks, making them a valuable tool.

Scans are a great alternative to physical copies for anything you don't need. Organizing your files into PDFs will make them more searchable and convenient than filing cabinets. Scanned papers you need to keep physically should also be saved in your work area, but if possible, find a place to put them elsewhere since you are unlikely to need to access them regularly.

What's under the desk?

Legroom is important, so don't overlook it. It's not just a safety hazard to have all those cables and cords under your workstation - they also contribute to the mayhem. To prevent tangles and give your feet more room, wrap Velcro around the straps and use cord tamers. You should move stacks of files from the floor into a filing cabinet or, better yet, digitized and shredded.

Handle your cables

We would recommend this tip to anyone who uses a lot of plugs, cords, and wires all the time. Cable ties are the best work-from-home gadgets. You can use cable ties to bind your cords together, binder clips to keep cords attached, or a cable holder to attach to your desk can be a solution to tangles and distractions caused by wires. Taking it one step further, you can use colored tape to label your plugs, cables, and chargers to avoid interfering with your coworkers.

Keep essential items together

Keep your list of to-do items nearby for outstanding tasks since not everything can be digitized. In addition, keep a weekly planner or a calendar at hand so you can plan like a boss, as well as notebooks to keep track of reminders, e-mails, and useful phrases.

Clean your desk before and after use

We would not recommend wiping your desk down every day with a wet cloth. It would be best if you cleaned up your workspace in the last five minutes of your working day. Give yourself the challenge of cleaning up your desk every day, whether the used-up coffee cups or the disorganized stack of papers. You will be surprised by the results, and besides, you will be pleased to start your workday in such a clean environment.

Consider multiple storage options

If your organized desk is the only place you keep office supplies, it is good to get additional storage space. If you reach for files every week, you might want to reorganize them into a file cabinet. An adjacent shelf can store headsets, chargers, and reference books. Post-it notes and important reminders go nicely on a bulletin board. A clean desk saves you time; organized storage spaces can do the same.