Home office organisation: from cardboard archive boxes to file dividers

#office supplies

Organising your home office is a must in 2020, with so many of us working from home. From cardboard archive boxes to file dividers, simple things can not only help you work smarter and more efficiently, they can also keep your home from turning into just a workspace.

Here we take a look at the range of standard archive boxes and storage solutions, along with file dividers and other filing supplies available, and plot how to best put them to use to keep your home office organised.

Home office organisation: from cardboard archive boxes to file dividers

The way we work has changed radically in 2020 and now home office organisation, from a standard archive box down to file dividers, is now top of many peoples’ to do list.

The coronavirus pandemic has ushered in a sea-change in how people work. Many more of us are now working from home, at least some of the time, in a change to working habits that may well last for many months, years or even permanently.

As a result, many people are starting to look at how to kit out their home office to offer the kind of convenience and efficiency they were once used to at work, but with practical, compact and space-saving elements that fit functional and easy storage neatly into the home and home office environment..

Filing cabinets offer a great way to organise your home office, and organising what is in each drawer of the cabinet can also make home working much easier. The range of filing cabinet dividers available is huge, as we shall see.

While filing cabinets offer one practical and space-saving way to efficiently organise your home office, being able to neatly store away documents and paperwork in archive boxes is increasingly important when it comes to home office organisation and the range of archive storage boxes available can help you do this professionally and practically– you’ll know where all your important documents are, and you will be able to easily dust around them.

Types of archival storage boxes

So, what types of archival storage boxes are available to help you organise your home office? You’d be amazed at how varied the range of sturdy archive boxes available is, each suited to its own range of filing purposes – rest assured there is a size and shape to suit all home office needs.

In many ways, office archive boxes are a bit like Matryoshka, those Russian dolls that fit one within another. The office archive box world starts with simple recycled cardboard archive box folders, which are suited to holding A4 files. Constructed from strong, recycled card, these one-piece boxes arrive flat and can be rapidly assembled through four simple folds and a tuck of a flap.

Each comes with a finger hole so you can easily access it on a shelf and each is printed with lines so that they can be clearly annotated – although sticky labels that can be printed on can be purchased separately, should you want to be super-neat.

For added neatness and to help neatly and compactly store archived materials that you may not need immediate access to, there are a range of recycled cardboard archive boxes that can take up to five archive boxes and take as much load as 20Kg. Made from double thickness card, these boxes can neatly contain archive boxes, as well as many other bulky items, should you be looking to tidy your home office.

For standard banking documents – and for all those financial documents in your home office – banking archive boxes and boxes for those boxes are also available, in the standard marbled finish with large white lined spaces for labelling, these boxes are double thickness and make any home office look the business.

Aside from documents, there are many other storage boxes available for organising your office. StrongLok boxes offer a crash-proof base and double-glued seams for extra strength, while one- and two-piece archive boxes offer easy-to-assemble storage of documents, files, folders and more in sturdy, plain white card.

Filing cabinet dividers or stationery file dividers: what’s the difference?

When it comes to organising your files in your office, you can use filing cabinet dividers or stationery file dividers – but what’s the difference?

Filing cabinet dividers are used to segment your files in your filing cabinet, while stationery file dividers are used to mark out sections and divide up files in folders.

Filing cabinet dividers are used to separate files in your filing cabinet so that you can sort them by type, alphabetically or however you wish to split them up. Typically, you need to first file your documents in a filing cabinet using a suspension file divider such as these foolscap suspension files, which are designed to fit on the hanging rails in standard-sized filing cabinets. Colour coded, these files are an ideal way to hold documents and divide up your cabinet.

Other types of filing cabinet dividers include Q-Connect square cut folders, which are also foolscap sized and flush cut, designed to keep documents separate within suspension files in filing cabinets. These too are colour coded, for easy filing. These also come in clear plastic so that you can easily see what is in any given folder.

Stationery file dividers and plain file dividers, on the other hand, are inserted into ring-binder or lever-arch files to segment sections, documents and generally organise how you keep your paperwork in files.

These have holes punched in them that allow them to be inserted into folders. They can be clear, so that you can see what is in the file, or they can simply be labelled dividers, either alpha-sorted or just with coloured tabs that you can annotate yourself.

Organising your files with A4 file dividers

Organising your files with A4 file dividers are a simple yet essential part of organising your home office and there are a range of dividers that can help you do this efficiently and colourfully.

As we have seen, these come in a wide variety of form-factors, with plastic file dividers and pouches through to file tab dividers that you can label yourself or which are alphabetised.

Plastic file dividers act like pouches that you can put a variety of items in, from single sheet documents, to multi-page items and even small things like receipts, instruction manuals and other documents of varying sizes and shapes – great for keeping important things in one easy to find place.

A4 dividers are used more to segment documents in A4 files, offering a colour-coded and/or alpha-sorted way to organise documents in lever arch files or similar. They can be used to break up documents into handy sections or to aid in the filing of documents of different types in a single lever-arch or ring binder maximising storage space and helping you organise your home office.

Want to know more about our wide range of file dividers and archive boxes?

For additional advice on the best file dividers, archive boxes and more, our Experts are here to help you find the right solutions and arrange next day delivery. Simply call us on 0800 542 44 28 or visit www.rajapack.co.uk.