5 Steps to Easily Organize Your Office
Whether at home or at the company where you work, a clean, organized office space makes work more efficient. Studies show that distracting clutter can sap your energy and make it more difficult to get work done. So, an organized office can allow you to work more efficiently and feel less stressed. Plus, your coworkers will feel more comfortable in your office or cubicle and you’ll impress your supervisors.
It’s worth taking the time to organize your desk and office space. Follow these steps to make your office a more comfortable and productive space.
Declutter First
You can’t truly organize your office if it’s full of things that don’t need to be there, so declutter first.
For office supplies, decluttering is straightforward. Go through all your paperwork, everything on your desk and in filing cabinets and bins. Put paperwork you need to deal with soon in your inbox, file records you need to keep by type and date, then shred and recycle old paperwork you no longer need.
Go through your drawers next, one at a time. Make sure you have supplies you need like scissors, staples, staplers, and paperclips, but don’t keep too many in your desk. That’s what your company’s supply closet is for. Remove everything you don’t need from your drawers. Some things may go elsewhere in your office, belong somewhere at home, or just be junk you can throw out. With these cleared out, you can easily organize each drawer.
Your Desktop, Walls, and Shelves
Once you’ve decluttered, it’s going to be much easier to organize your desk and office. On your desktop, make sure you always have some extra space, enough room for a notepad so that you can take notes if you need to, or use that space to work when sorting through mail.
Keep items you use frequently close at hand. For example, if you often staple papers together, keep the stapler on top of your desk.
On your desk, or hanging on the wall behind it, you should have trays serving as an inbox and an outbox. This makes it easy to know what paperwork you need to take care of soon, and what needs to be sent to the post office or out through interoffice mail.
Books related to your job belong on shelves, either by your desk or on the wall.
Everyone should personalize their office, but don’t go overboard. Keep several pictures around, a few on the walls and one on your desk, of people or places you love. It’s nice to have some knickknacks around, too, whether those be baseballs, Hummel figurines, or Funko Pops. Keep a few of these items that match your interests and personality around and your office will really feel like your space.
Sanitize
Over time your keyboard, monitor, mouse, phone, and desktop can get dusty or even dirty with food particles. So, use sanitizing wipes and clean them. Glass cleaner works well for monitors.
Your Virtual Desktop
While your physical desktop, shelves, files, and office space are the most important parts to clean and organize, your computer desktop is important, too. After all, in today’s job world we spend much of our time looking at our monitors.
So, your computer desktop is important to keep organized, too. Have icons for programs you regularly use on your taskbar and desktop. Remove icons for applications you rarely use.
Go through your email inbox and trash or archive messages you don’t need. Make time to respond to important ones, and if there’s a meeting or other important event coming up, put it on your calendar.
Clean Daily
Once you’ve organized your space, set aside 10 minutes at the end of each workday to straighten up. Put everything where it belongs, wipe down your keyboard and monitor, and take out your trash. You’ll return to a clean work environment the next day, ready to do a great job.
If you need a place to store some of those extra office supplies, business inventory, paperwork, or personal items, then consider a self storage unit. We have listings for facilities across the U.S. and Canada, so you will surely find one nearby that meets your needs.
