Maintaining a neat and orderly home office can be a challenge. A home office can easily become a catch-all for the rest of your home's clutter. Next thing you know, you can't find that bill that must be paid, or last year's tax returns.

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But with these simple tips and a little effort, you can create and maintain a neat and orderly home office.

Create a System

Come up with a way to deal with your workflow. Get an inbox to use for incoming work, an outbox for things that have been dealt with and are to be filed or thrown away and a filing system for keeping track of it all once it leaves your desk.

Clean Your Desk

You spend most of your time in your home office at your desk, so this is a logical place to start. Is it buried under stacks of paper, pens, business cards or other debris? Go through it and separate everything into piles based on what you need to keep, what needs looking over later, and what needs to be thrown away (put this pile straight into the trash can).

More on perfecting your apartment office space:
How to Make a Study Space in Your Apartment
Create an Efficient Study Space in Your Apartment
How to Create a Job-Searching Space at Home
Organizing Your Home Office

Get a Filing Cabinet

A four-drawer file cabinet is useful for storing last year's tax returns, client info and other things you need to get to that would be in your way if it was piled on your desk.

Cut the Cords

Keep your cords dusted and out of sight behind your desk, or replace your keyboard, mouse and printer with wireless peripherals.

When in Doubt, Throw it Out

Be honest. If that catalog that's been on your desk since January is still there, you're probably not going to order anything from it. Throw it away. If there is anything you have acted on but are required to keep, file it. And if you have hard copies of anything that you can access readily online, toss it.