One of the biggest reasons why people are not being productive is a messy office. When there are too many things on your desk and when you cannot find the document you need, you will waste valuable time, and get stressed for no reason at all.
To create a clutter-free workspace, you don’t have to do many things! There are a few simple steps that can help you clean your office and organize your desk in almost no time at all. Follow our tips and you will feel productive, happy, and refreshed every time you walk into your office and sit behind your desk. You can use this guide for cleaning both your home office and space in your workplace, so, start by making a plan, and follow our list to create the perfect place for you to finish every task successfully.
Throw away things you don’t need
If you want to organize your workspace and if you want to create a clutter-free zone, then you first need to create a clean place. If you are like most people, you keep too many things you don’t need.
First, throw away all the food wrappers that are hidden all around your desk. Then check all the documents and papers to see if you need to keep them or throw them away. Check all the pens and pencils you are using, and see which ones are good to go, and which ones should be thrown away.
Check to see if you’ve forgotten to return something you’ve borrowed from your coworkers and try to get rid of as many unnecessary things as you can.
Organize the space
The next step is organizing and making a plan. Start by thinking about how you can utilize the whole space and which parts of your desk need to stay clean, and where you can store all the things that you rarely use, but you may still need them.
If you are using a desktop computer, then you should first clean it, and then position it in a way that you can do your work, keep a good posture, but still be able to access the other things on your desk.
If you are using a laptop, then you should always leave room for it, without moving things around. Make a plan for what you will need within arm’s length and what can be stored in a cabinet or a drawer.
Clean the drawers
When was the last time you’ve cleaned the drawers? When we start working in a new office, we usually fill all the drawers with unnecessary things in the first month, and we forget about them.
Many people use the drawers as pantries and store food there. You should stop doing that right now! Start by cleaning them and throwing things away that you don’t need or use. You can use one of the drawers to store things that you cannot throw away, but you don’t necessarily need them as well.
By doing this, you will save a lot of space on your desk, you will create a better flow and your whole place will look a lot more organized. The same goes for cabinets and other storage furniture.
Put every item in their place
One thing that can really help with organizing your office is to make a plan on where every item should go. For example, think of the things that need to be in the drawers, and which things you’d need to be on your desk. You need to have enough space to work on your computer, and you may need a space for the phone, pens and a notepad.
Create a workflow that will allow you to have all of these things next to each other, but not on top of each other. If you have an organizer that you use to write down all of the things that you need to do, Zenflowchart suggests that you can use a digital flowchart maker to create tasks and make plans, without wasting paper, or piling notebooks.
Don’t pile things
We’re all guilty of that! We think that by piling things up, we will get a clutter-free office. But the reality is when you pile all those documents or books up, you forget what the pile has and you never get to cleaning it up.
It is better to “leave everything lying around” than to put everything on top of each other. When things are lying around, they will bother you and you will have to clean them and decide if you should put them in the drawer or just throw them away.
Switch to digital
Nowadays everything that is on paper can be digitized. Unless you need a hard copy of a document, you don’t have to print everything up. There are a lot of ways to back documents up, so nothing gets lost.
By switching to digital, you will not only save a lot of space and get rid of the clutter in your workspace, but you will also help the environment. Millions of trees are getting cut every day, just so we can use that office paper. So, when you stop printing everything, you will at least do your part of helping the environment.
Do you really need all the books?
One thing that we all are guilty of is having too many books. We keep them everywhere, and we rarely use them. When was the last time you looked something up in a book instead of Google?
If you want to read during your lunch break, you can keep a book in your office, but only one. When you finish reading it, take it back home and get another one. You don’t need all those books to just stay on the desk and waste valuable space.
Is there anything you’d like to add to this list? Do you have a special plan that you follow when you want to clean your office? It is said that when you declutter your desk, you will feel like you’re working in a better environment and you will be able to finish your tasks on time and with ease.
Cleaning the whole space will help you relax and when you do that, you can think about the projects you are working on, and maybe come up with solutions for your problems. Experts recommend that you should do this on a Friday so that when you come into the office the next week, you will feel like you are starting a new, and a better chapter.
