Declutter Your Office - 9 Tips on How to Take Charge of Your Office and Workspace
You may be pleasantly surprised at what a positive effect that de-cluttering your office can actually have on your daily work environment. When you have to take time looking through various piles of clutter in order to find valuable information, it takes away from time that could actually be spent doing your job or gathering the key pieces of information to complete an important deadline. It certainly doesn't hurt having an organized office when you are entertaining clients either. Most people would prefer not to deal with someone them that can't simply find basic items in their office or work area, no matter how valuable you supposedly are.
Below are several ideas that will help you declutter your office and help you keep you and your business running efficiently.
1. Make sure that you have a clear walk way from your door to your desk and to your filing cabinets without tripping over anything on the way.
2. Evaluate your desk. Does it work for you and your office size? An over-sized desk may be making your office space feel very crammed but a desk that is too small could be the reason behind those piles of paper on your floor.
3. If your office has a lot of empty space, consider adding a nice table and simple chairs to hold meetings at. This provides a great meeting place and keeps everyone focused on the meeting rather than distracted by items in an office.
4. Do you have essentials in your office to allow you to function properly such as an appropriate size filing cabinet, a table for your printer or fax machine, etc?
5. Place a printer stand next to your desk so that it can free up valuable space from your actual desktop work area.
6. Do you have piles of books and papers lying around? Hang some shelves, and organize all of that those items and get them up and out of the way.
7. Look at how your office furniture is arranged. If you constantly need to get up out of your chair and walk over to the filing cabinet, this could be why stacks of papers accumulate on your desk all the time. Perhaps you could move the desk closer to the filing area or vise verse.
8. Decide what really needs to be actually on the desk. The key to allowing yourself to have a desk top free of clutter is gaining control of the paperwork. Labeling project files and making them accessible will assure that you actually put papers away where they need to go rather than having them scattered all over your desk. The standard stacking trays labeled "in box" and "outbox" are also helpful in saving space and keeping things organized.
9. Once you have the top of your desk taken care of, move onto the drawers. Most office supply stores will carry a large variety of desk caddies and even trays that are designed specifically to fit inside desk drawers and keep you organized. Pens, thumb tacks, paperclips and other office supplies can get quite out of hand without the help of proper organization tools.
Taking the initial step of organizing your office is always the hardest. However, once you get control over your area it's easy to keep it this way as long as you spend a few minutes either at the end of the day or throughout the day to put everything away where it belongs. A few spare moments dedicated to organization everyday will assure that your office and or desk doesn't get out of control anymore. Create an office of convenience so that it is working for you, not against you. Remember, you want to work smarter, not harder.
