Guest Author - Lisa Shea

Anybody with a home office area knows that they tend to fill up with junk VERY quickly. Here are some cheap ideas to help you get your office under control.

First, milk crates!! Just put them on their side and stack them up. Label each one with a magic marker with what is in it. They're easy to move, and they can help you organize your piles quickly. People waste so much time every day "finding things". If you save all that time, think of what you could accomplish with it!

Put a cardboard box under your desk for paper recycling. Recycle EVERYTHING that you don't need to keep. Most households end up holding onto a ton of paper that they don't need to. Most companies give you the ability to pay bills and print out records online. Don't save every single electric bill - just write down the basic info in a spreadsheet and then toss it. That way you can still do your evaluations of how well you're saving electricity without having piles of paper around.

Get a cheap, large corkboard to hang behind your desk. Pin important things to it - a calendar, schedules, maps, tickets to upcoming events. That way you can always find the things that are most important and can see your schedule at a glance.

Most people have way too many mugs lying around. Use one as a pencil holder! That way you get the enjoyment of the mug's decoration as well as a functional, daily use out of it.

Go through your books and determine which ones you really need to keep. Donate the rest to a library or friends. You can always get them out of the library if you need to refer to them, and you could probably use the extra space.

If you have things you do not refer to any more, find a way to archive them. You probably don't look at last year's tax records, but you need to keep them for the IRS for seven years. Put them all into a box, mark the box clearly, and then stick them in the attic. You can get to them if you really need to, but they're out of your daily way.