What if one afternoon could make you happier and more productive?
No, we’re not talking about taking some kind of miracle pill. All you have to do is organize your office!
A messy work office cuts into your productivity and even quality of life. But with the best organizing tips, you can clean things up in no time.
Wondering what those tips are? Keep reading to find out!
Easy Cleansing
Before you can figure out how to organize an office, you need to get rid of all the excess junk. Believe it or not, this step is really easy!
It’s a lot like cleaning out your closet. You just need to toss out everything that you haven’t used in the last month or so.
If your office is filled with souvenirs that clutter the space, you need to toss them out. And those notes from last year’s meetings? You probably don’t need to hold onto those any longer.
Trust us: organizing the whole office becomes a lot easier when the whole office is less cluttered.
New Arrangements
Another great way to organize this space is to move your furniture around. However, it’s important that you have a game plan before you start doing this.
For example, do you constantly have to get up and walk to the filing cabinet in the corner? If so, you should probably move the cabinet closer to your main desk.
This is all about efficiency: think about how many steps it takes to complete various physical tasks around your office. Next, rearrange your furniture in order to reduce that number of steps.
Even small efficiency boosts add up. Save yourself 10 steps a day and you’ve saved over 10,000 steps a year! Plus, this is your chance to make your office more ergonomic.
Wires, Be Gone
Sometimes, our work offices and our home offices have the same organizational problem. Let’s take wires, for example.
Your office is likely filled with electronic equipment. This includes computers, monitors, printers, lamps. You might even have things like a TV, radio, or personal fridge in the space.
This creates a disorganized mess of wires. However, you can use wire organizers to organize and hide this clutter from yourself and from any office visitors.
In addition to the organizers, use some twisty-ties to tie the wires together. As a bonus, this makes them much easier to move around when you are moving the electronics around.
Zone It Out
Like we said, organizing is all about efficiency. And one of the best ways to make your office more efficient is to split it into “zones.”
Start by figuring out what you do in each area and mentally labeling it. Your computer desk is your primary work area, your bookshelf is your reference area, and so on.
Next, remove anything from those areas that doesn’t help you accomplish the main task. Little figurines may look cute, for instance, but if they are on your bookshelf you will not be able to get to your actual books.
This goes hand-in-hand with the furniture re-arranging as well. You may discover a few easy swaps will make each “zone” run much more efficiently!
The Reach Test
The computer is your main area of productivity. Here is a simple organizational tip: remove everything within reach that you don’t use on a daily basis.
For example, you may have a stapler by the keyboard. But unless you are truly stapling every day at work, this object spends most of your time just taking up space.
This is also a good way to remove distractions from your office. When you can more easily focus on your keyboard and monitor, you will get more work done.
Rock the Labels
Want to take your workplace organization to the next level? You’re going to need to bust out the label maker.
At the bare minimum, a label maker helps you label individual drawers and cabinets. This will help remind you to only put certain items in their designated areas.
Without labels, most of us end up putting random documents into random areas. Pretty soon, all of our drawers and cabinets are overflowing with a random mess!
With a label maker, you create a place for everything important. And then you keep everything important in its place. For smaller items, you can always get some small tins for the office.
The Other Desktop
So far, we’ve been focusing on your literal desktop. However, don’t forget your computer desktop!
You’ll want to make sure all the icons on your screen are organized and symmetrical. And try to create organized computer folders for all of your important documents.
To organize e-mails, create additional folders and put all your messages where they go. Once you graduate beyond having only three mail folders, the sky is the limit on your organization!
Daily Schedule
One of our main goals of organizing your office was to improve productivity. But do you have a way of actually keeping track of this?
We recommend splitting your day up into an hourly schedule. This schedule should be a mixture of specific daily tasks and general time slots for things like responding to e-mails.
Creating such a schedule gives you a goal for completing your tasks in a certain amount of time. And if you’re taking too long on any of them, removing clutter and distractions from the office can help speed things up.
Paperless Office
What is the number one cause of work office clutter? For most people, it’s paper.
This may include handouts, printouts, handwritten notes…the list goes on. It’s easy to see how this adds up!
One “easy mode” to organizing is to go paperless (or as paperless as you can). Scan important documents instead of holding onto the paper. Also, take notes via computer or phone instead of a notebook.
It really is that simple. When there’s no paper in your office, there’s no paper clutter, either.
Best Organizing Tips: The Bottom Line
Now you know the best organizing tips for your office. But do you know how to become even more productive?
We specialize in helping businesses of any size run more efficiently. To see how we can boost your efficiency, check out our free business forms and templates today!
