The New Year Is A Good Time For Cleaning Out Office Clutter
Let's take a look at our physical space
Let's take a look at our physical space. Do you sometimes wonder how you lost real estate in your office? The paper mongrels have eaten it up the desk is somewhere? Where did these piles of paper come from? I thought we were supposed to be green? Paperless, I don't think so. If I save it in my computer, that is a giant black hole, I may never find it. I better print it so it doesn't get lost. Now try to find the paper report you were working on last night. You were sure it was on the desk but can't find it anywhere.
If any of these sound familiar to you. You need to clean your office clutter at once! A cluttered work desk is a major problem when it comes to your productivity. Now is a good time to take care of it. Since the New Year is around the corner, getting rid of office clutter is an excellent way of starting the New Year!
The time needed to clear the office clutter depends on how much clutter you have in your office. Taking at least a couple of hours to clear away things is a good idea. If you find yourself getting lost in the clutter you may need to allocate couple of hours each week or hire a professional organizer.
You will need some empty cardboard boxes, a shredder, files, some stickers and some empty boxes too. Clearing your work desk at the beginning is a good idea. Generally there will be lots of loose papers, invoices, letters and project reports lying around. Start sorting the papers into separate piles of like kind items. The receipts, the project reports, the mail and invoices should be separated.
Once you have the piles ready, file the receipts and invoices in the files. Make sure to stick the sticker on it so that you can read the heading easily. The junk mail should be thrown in the garbage bin. Some of the papers need shredding so put them in a separate box labeled accordingly. If your office has a separate shredding department pick it up and move it to that department.
If you work in a small organization, you will have to do it. Ask your banker if they have a shredding day. I once burnt up a shredder trying to do it myself then find out my bank brings in a huge truck and will shred it all for free. If you are a small business owner and it isn't worth your time, take it to the pros.
Make sure you are compliant with the company's retention programs before throwing it all away. There are individual rules for each organization. If you aren't sure what is to be sure to adopt a policy or ask your legal department and save the items in a separate folder.
Once the work desk is cleared, take out the drawers. Be careful putting your hand in there just in case something is growing. Oh by the way the work desk really shouldn't be the refrigerator or your personal cosmetic drawer. If you are finding it is full of piles of business cards you collected throughout the years you may want to think of a better way to organize your contacts. Card Scanners work great and there is a fantastic program called Microsoft Office it integrates into. Once you scan the cards and clear out the junk consider a drawer organizer.
Now you are probably still a mess but getting some semblance of order so don't give up yet. This is the part where even professional organizers can feel overwhelmed but we can see the big picture.
All the paper should be filed in appropriate files or folders. You will need to work on your filing system, sorry that is another chapter. So until you have that in place make sure to write the heading in pencil so that you can move things around without causing any more confusion.
If you do not have enough filing cabinets make the end of the year a good time to purchase another. Before taking up more prime real estate on the floor consider cleaning the file cabinet out or going paperless.
A little trivia a four drawer file cabinet holds 18,000 pieces of paper, talk about a black hole. Think twice about saving and printing information out that can be found later on the internet when you really need it.
Once you have storage system in place for everything in your office, your life will be easier. Clutter in your space creates clutter on your mind which greatly decreases your productivity. You have now set yourself free! Don't stop here. Get educated on getting a system in place to keep your physical and mental space clear.
by: Karen Cynowa
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