Declutter Home Office Supplies {15 Minute Mission}

Today's mission is to declutter home office supplies. This is all the stuff like paper clips, rubber bands, clips, post it notes, staples, notepads, and computer supplies like printer cartridges, etc.


Notice I didn't say pens and pencils, just because yesterday we had that as its own mission, but if you didn't get to that yet, today's the day for those writing instruments as well.

This mission is designed to be done concurrently when taking the Home Office Organization Challenge here on the site, which is one of the 52 Week Organized Home Challenges.

This mission is pretty simple. Just gather all of your home office supplies from all the corners of your home where you have them stashed, including within your home office, junk drawer in your kitchen, or wherever else you have them.

Throw away anything that no longer works, or is broken.

Next, once all of your supplies are in one place you'll easily be able to tell if you have too much of one type of thing. Winnow it down to a reasonable amount that you can use in a year, or less. At least that's my personal rule of thumb.

If you've got excess that you cannot use within that time frame I would personally suggest donating such items, such as to your church, a school, or somewhere else that can get more immediate use from them.

Then, redistribute back to all appropriate places the supplies that should be there, now that you've kept a more realistic amount.

You should have some stored in whatever places make sense for where you consistently need to access the supplies. For most this is a home office or desk top area, but it could be your kitchen for example, if that's where you do your household paperwork.

In addition, I would suggest if you do have large amounts of a specific supply you've chosen to keep, such as the jumbo bag of rubber bands you purchased since you feel you will use them all before they get kind of dried out and don't work as well (you know what I mean!) I wouldn't keep ALL of them in your home office desk drawer, for example.

Yes, in general it is a good idea to keep like items together. But especially with things like office supplies, that are often bought in bulk, trying to keep every single binder clip, paper clip or rubber band in your small desk drawer will quickly lead to a feeling of chaos and clutter.

So if you've got large amounts of certain staple supplies I would suggest considering a small supplies area that you keep the larger stashes and keeping a much small amount in your desk or kitchen drawer for current use. As long as your larger supply stash is organized and fairly easily accessible when you need it, it won't be a problem to just visit it to get restocks of certain supplies as needed.

Finally, I hesitate to say this during a mission where I'm telling you to declutter these supplies, but this is also a good time to assess what supplies you do have and make sure you've got the right stuff. So here's my printable home office supplies list, that says the essential supplies for this room.

Below are photos from readers who've taken on this mission and really cleared out some of their old supplies. Tell me how you've done as well in the comments, or submit your own photos here. I'll add the best ones to the site!

Top photo courtesy of Charles Barilleaux

Purging & Organizing Home Office Supplies

Susan from Camp Slinkard shared what she did when she took on this mission, in the two photos shown above.

She said: "I decided to make a mini-office drawer in the island to keep a few basic office supplies handy. I also took advantage of an EMPTY storage box for small hardware (screws, nails, etc.), and purged all of that stuff neatly from the house and sent it to live in the garage. I don't have a 'before' photo of the island drawer because I just decided one evening to dive right in. Here's the 'during' of the process…"

"Here's the after. I even segregated the writing utensils. Toby is often looking for red or green pens (he IS a teacher, after all;)), so I put all of them in a single container. I also culled all the pens that don't work and the extra 37 mechanical pencils with no lead!"


The photos above are all from a reader, Dora, who decluttered a couple of drawers full of home office supplies in her home. She explained of the top photo, "I started working on the office desk drawers.
My husband's idea of organizing is putting everything in baggies 😝 I took all this mess out of one drawer." She then worked on each drawer removing unwanted items, and the end results were cleared out drawers with a lot less stuff in them, making it much easier to find the supplies she needs.



Finally, here are photos from a reader, Brandy. After she did this mission she sent in her before and after photos saying,"I don't have a home office, but I do have supplies. This is all neatly packed and in a spot for easy access but still out of the way (under my dresser)."

Want To Do More Decluttering Missions? Get Started With Declutter 365 Today!

Once you declutter one type of item in your home I bet you'll want to declutter some more. After all, decluttering gives you a great reward for even a small investment of time and energy.

The Declutter 365 system is designed to help you declutter, over the course of a year, your entire house, with just 15 minutes of decluttering each day!

Hundreds of thousands of people use this proven system to get rid of their clutter, and bring peace and calm back to their homes.

Declutter 365 works to guide you to clear the clutter without overwhelm, focusing on just one small area at a time, and without making a huge mess in the process, so you see consistent forward progress without all that "messy middle" that makes it even harder to function in your home than before you started.

In addition to building a daily decluttering habit, the Declutter 365 program, along with the accompanying 52 Week Organized Home Challenge, teaches you the skills, habits, routines, and mindsets necessary to maintain the clutter free and organized state of your home from now on, so it'll never be as messy and cluttered as it is right now, ever again.

If you haven't already, make sure to get your copy of this year's Declutter 365 annual calendar here (it's FREE!), find today's date, and do 15 minutes of decluttering on the day's mission. Then, repeat again tomorrow, and again and again. Over the course of the next year, if you do this 15 minutes per day, you'll declutter your whole house!

Get This Home Office & Technology Decluttering Checklist + 32 Other Decluttering Checklists For Your Home

Right now you're decluttering home office and technology items around your home, and there can be a lot of these types of items.

Get your 1 page home office and technology decluttering checklist, plus 32 other decluttering checklists, to help you declutter your entire home here.

I've done the hard work of breaking down these tasks into smaller more manageable steps for you, so you don't get overwhelmed or worry you're forgetting a task, and you can go at the pace you want, whether that's fast or slow.

In addition, you can tackle these decluttering tasks in whatever order you want when you use these checklists!

Related Pages You May Enjoy

Getting Clutter Free 15 Minutes At A Time Hall Of Fame

Getting Rid Of Home Office & Technology Clutter Hall Of Fame

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