It seems everyone wants to get organized, but no one knows quite how to do it. There are plenty of articles about ‘de-cluttering’ your home or home office, but very few about organizing your office space. So we decide to gather some of the best ideas.
Of course, we found plenty of practical suggestions about filing, eliminating junk mail, paper, time-management etc., but few that actually addressed changing your way of thinking and feeling about clutter. Computers have a great deal to offer organization in terms of paperless storage, but their power is often underutilized and misapplied. Even when we get bigger hard drives, better searches and even better organizing software programs, we still get computer clutter.
Clutter-proofing your business is about changing people, not the way you organize things. Things don’t clutter, people clutter. The things that make up your office aren’t disorganized, it’s the the people who handle things that are disorganized.
Yes, far too often we concentrate on things in the office such as papers, files, filing cabinets, memos and to-do lists that never get looked at. Essentially, businesses have to put getting their files in order as secondary to getting their minds in order. Clutter-proofing your office space is more about the awareness of what needs to get done, and how to deal with the tools that help to get it done when the job is over.
There are some tools that can help a small business to overcome office clutter and – they reside between people’s ears. Yes, using your brain and handling files and papers is all about getting the information in and then getting the paper stored away or recycled. Having a mental rule about never handling the same piece of paper more than once, can go a long way in cutting down the clutter on the desk or in a file drawer.
Clutter-proofing a shared office is invariably more important than keeping a single team space organized. When you are sharing a semi-private office with another business owner, there is a an encroachment issue on whose space is being cluttered. One person could have an empty desk, while the other person has a desk laden with files and paperwork. The first thing a visitor notices is the cluttered desk and not the one without anything on it.
Another good way of cutting down office clutter is having no cords cluttering the floor or desktops in the office space, and using wireless keyboards, mice and internet. While it may be simple to bind cords, they still create clutter.