• Office cabinets create a place for everything, so everything can be in its place.red office #2 image by Val Thoermer from Fotolia.com
  
  An office with insufficient or badly organized filing cabinets can quickly become an unusable mess. Taking the time not only to organize your cabinets, but to acquire the right kind of cabinetry for your situation, will pay off in the long run with an office that is efficient and productive.
  
  

Separation of Materials

• If you have a large amount of folders and other materials that need filing, get enough filing cabinets so that you can assign folders to different cabinets in some logical order. This will make it much easier to find things. For example, one cabinet can be dedicated o personal papers, one to business papers and a third to back issues of magazines. Have more cabinets than you need so that they don't get too tightly packed. Going through the cabinets every year or so and sending useless or outdated material to the recycling or shredding box will also help to keep your cabinets efficient and functional.
  
  

File Cabinet Half Wall

• Incorporate your filing cabinets into the decor of your office by grouping them in the middle of the room as a half wall. This leaves wall space free for bookshelves or window access. Make a counter that fits over the grouped cabinets. This will make them look better and will allow their tops to be used for other purposes. If the half wall separates two different work areas, alternate the directions that the office cabinet drawers are facing so half of them can be used in each area.
  
  

Sacrifice Drawer

• In any office you start to accumulate things that don't really have a category. If you try to make a category for each of these items, some of which may be one of a kind, you will soon have an unusable filing system--and a headache. Solve this problem by exempting one drawer from any attempt at order. This is your "sacrifice drawer." When you come across something that can't be filed, whether it is a unique document, a package of colored pencils, or your son's yo-yo, as soon as you realize you don't have a category for it, toss it into the sacrifice drawer. Clean out the drawer once a year, but otherwise, don't worry about it. This tactic will save you many hours of hassle.