DECLUTTERING YOUR OFFICE – HOW AND WHY YOU NEED TO DO IT

We spend a large portion of our time, tucked away in our office, (hopefully) being as productive as we can.

As our workload increases, our time becomes more of a commodity and it’s easy to fall into the mindset of prioritising our workload over other duties like keeping the office organised.

The reality is, one affects the other. A cluttered office stagnates workflow, and decreases overall productivity. So while it might feel like we are sacrificing something rather insignificant, we are really decreasing overall productivity when we neglect this aspect.

6 Tips for Decluttering your office for 2019 and beyond

Work Stress Free & Increase Productivity

Clutter leaves our mind fragmented, we are less focused in a cluttered environment and spend more time scrounging around trying to find your favourite blue pen or a particular document.

Clutter increases stress, it bombards us with constant stimuli, increasing stress hormones such as cortisol. In cluttered environments we are less focused and our minds becomes less organised, reflecting the environment in which we are working in.

Here are a few key tips for decluttering your office.

PULL EVERYTHING OUT – THEN START FROM SCRATCH

When you take on the task of re-organising decluttering your office, you need a fresh start, a blank canvas.

As time goes by, clutter builds. We often think we will surely need this and that sometime in the future, tucking it away in a drawer or cabinet “just in case…”. Over time, you find yourself in an office full of things you don’t really have a use for, or maybe you do, and it’s just stashed away in the wrong spot.

Take everything out, I mean EVERYTHING…

SORT IT OUT

Now that you have cleaned out and gutted your messy, cluttered office. It’s time to go through everything one by one, sorting out what you really need to keep in the office and what you can get rid of.

Remember you have to make some compromises here and there, as some of those items you want to keep “Just in case” may need to be sacrificed in the name of a better flowing and less cluttered work space.

Sort items by priority.  Those that you will need to use often, should be at arms length. Then you will have items which you will use fairly regularly, but maybe not every day. These should be close by, in a drawer or desk cabinet. The items which you need to keep in the office but rarely use, don’t need to be close by and can be left in filing cabinets or storage space.

LINE A CHOSEN WALL WITH FILING CABINETS

If you really do have a lot of things in your office which you need to keep around, consider dedicating a particular wall, room or office corner specifically for storage. Having ample storage will also prevent future clutter.

Choose a particular wall or corner in your office and build and install a cabinet, to fit it’s specific dimensions.

If you have a xerox machine that you need in the office, but would prefer out of sight, keeping it behind a cabinet door is a great way of having it accessible, but not out in the open.

GET YOUR CABLES IN ORDER!

With more electrical devices comes more… cables. They can become wild, sprawling out in all directions, getting tangled and knotted and can be a danger in the office.

• Streamline your cables by bunching them together and tying them up with cable ties.
• So you know which cable corresponds to which device, label them concisely.
• Conceal your cables by running them through pipe insulation. Doing this looks much cleaner and more organised than having bare cables sprawling out throughout the office.

GO PAPERLESS

The digital age has made going paperless a completely natural transition, often times companies are really only still printing out documents out of old habits, following dated procedures. Going paperless saves space and helps in reducing the carbon footprint.

MAINTAIN IT

Once you have decluttered your office, the end game is to keep it that way! At the end of every week, or a regular scheduled time, do a thorough cleanup of your office. Also, throughout the day, catch yourself out when you are misplacing items or making a mess and try and reverse these bad habits.

By Daniel Calvin, who is on a mission to help businesses increase productivity and do so in a way that benefits everyone in the organization. He is the community relations manager for Number1 Office Machines.

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