Declutter Office & Clean Out Tips
Find out how to declutter office & clean out tips including techniques such as evaluating items, sorting supplies, reorganizing the workspace, and improving your office organizing habits.
The busier you are in your workplace, the more chaotic and less efficient your working environment gets. Indeed, every workforce necessitates a strategy to keep everything neat and organized in order to retain productivity and performance.
Decluttering and cleaning your office might appear to be a simple activity, but when we spend so much time in our offices, it is indeed tempting to become acclimated to, and even immune to the clutter. This frequently results in unforeseen organizational issues.
Having a plan to keep a workplace clear of clutter and disorganization is frequently a good predictor of a team’s capability to handle more complex tasks. Truly, decluttering and cleaning your office can be a very strenuous task, but the results it will give can give you a much-better atmosphere that will increase your work productivity.
Feel free to apply the decluttering tips and organization recommendations from the experts in this article to help enhance your work enthusiasm and performance.
How To Plan Your Office Clean Out
Cleaning your office is a very difficult chore, but with every worker’s proactive and cooperative participation, things can progress much more quickly.
Here are some tips on how you can plan on cleaning out your office:
Make a List of Everything You Have in Your Office – Create a list of everything on everyone’s desk. This is an excellent place to start to see if there are any items that can be discarded.
Take a Picture of Your Office – Have you ever been to another office and spotted clutter that your coworker is completely unaware of? The same is probably applicable to your office. Outsiders observe your office from a different angle and are more aware of clutter that you might not be aware of.
Taking an image of your office from the door is a wonderful method to help you plan your cleaning project. This will allow you to see your workplace in the same light as your visitors. If you are having problems spotting clutter, try photographing it from various angles.
The pictures you will take should offer a completely different perspective, and potential flaws may appear in the photo, allowing you to rapidly pinpoint the spots that must be cleaned out.
Evaluate Every Item in the Office – This plan might seem to be an exhausting activity, but once you recognize what you have, determining what you actually need becomes easy.
You might be amazed at how many excess pens, notebooks, sticky notes, folders, and other things you have all along.
When searching through your office materials, you should plan on providing three containers with these names: keep, archive, and trash. The objects in the “keep” container should be stuff you will need on a daily and weekly basis.
The “archive” container must contain essential information and documents that should be retained but do not need to be visible daily.This category can also be divided into two sub-groups: one for annual storage and the second for long-term storage.
Lastly, the “trash” container must contain items that can be discarded or donated.
Think About Reorganizing the Positioning of the Main Objects in Your Office – If you want to see all of the clutter in your office space, you can plan on reorganizing and rearranging the placements of your desks, chairs, cabinets, and other essential objects.
Once you move all of these furnishings, you will see all of the areas that need a major cleanup. You can examine your office arrangement if it frequently becomes messy shortly after cleaning.
The items you use daily must be stored close to you for quick access. However, the items that are rarely used can be put in cabinets or boxes to keep your workspaces clutter-free.
How To Declutter Your Office Space
Now that you have a plan on cleaning your office, it is now time to start decluttering. Here are some techniques on how you can do it:
Take Everything Out – It is indeed advisable to start from scratch for a completely clean workstation. Take everything off the desk, cabinets, and shelves.
Afterward, arrange them neatly on the floor or in a different area. Spend some time to thoroughly wipe down all surfaces and clean up your computer equipment once your desk is clear.
Start Organizing your Office for Accessibility and Practicality – Following the start-from-scratch approach for reducing clutter, the next step would be to organize the remaining objects in your office in accordance with how often you use them.
To enhance your productivity, keep your most frequently used or favorite objects, such as chargers and documents, in the top desk compartments, where they are easy to access.
Keep the pencils and pens in a cup or any cup-like container nearby and leave extra space in the lower drawers for items like headphones, staplers, and elastic bands.
Organize the remainder of the office in the same approach, with your least-used stuff at the farthest side. This easy approach will boost work efficiency by keeping your most frequently used objects close at hand while keeping your other personal belongings stashed away and off your desktop.
Make Effective Use of Dividers and Shelves – Dividers can be very beneficial, especially if you have a habit of tossing objects in drawers and leaving them disorganized and untidy.
Folders, brochures, reference documents, and other paperwork can be arranged using suspended shelves, whereas drawer dividers keep minor office objects segregated, categorized, and easy to find.
Organize All of the Cables – The number of wires in every office appears to increase continuously, from mobile and laptop chargers to HDMI wires and headphone adapters. It might be a never-ending effort to get these connections under control, whether they are on top of or under your desktop.
Several workers opt to disregard this issue, but if a problem arises with any of your gadgets, the lack of organizing can result in significant delays in diagnosing and resolving the issue.
Organize Every Item According to their Classification – The rule of threes is frequently used by leaders of all types because it is effective. In this case, you can start using the aforementioned plan if you wish to organize your supplies and possessions more efficiently.
Put all of the objects in their respective categories, which are “keep,” “archive,” and “trash.” Everything must be able to find a spot.
Store your belongings in their organized locations now that you recognize which ones you want to keep and how near they must be. Keep your workstation as nice and clear as practicable to make the rest of the office appear clutter-free.
Decluttering Your Workspace Tips
Clutter affects not only your physical environment but also your mental health. To put it another way, you often lack the ability to concentrate when your mind is preoccupied with how your office is looking. A cluttered office is often indicative of a worker’s mental state.
Here are some further tips on how you can efficiently declutter your workspace and maintain your work performance and productivity.
If the Clutter In Your Office is Severe, Consider Getting Rid of Everything – Regardless of the office size, instead of choosing what to save and discard, sometimes, it can be better to get rid of practically everything and then gradually add items back in as needed.
It is not unusual to find items in a work environment that have not been used in months, but that does not suggest that they have to remain. By disposing of everything and then adding items back in as needed, you can keep only the essentials more appropriately and realistically.
Even though this strategy may appear drastic, it might occasionally be a good way to rapidly evaluate which objects are unnecessary or interrupt your performance.
Make a Digital Copy of Your Documents & Notes – The majority of your clutter is likely to be paper-based: paperwork, business contact cards, post-it notes, meeting minutes, and other documents. This paper-based clutter takes up a lot of space, and the reality is the majority of these documents are not something important.
Rather than keeping them on hand in case you need them at some point, you can convert your physical documents into digital ones by producing electronic versions, either by having them scanned or typewritten.
Improve Your Organizing, Cleaning, and Decluttering Habits – Maintain the decluttered state of your office. After occupying your office for the day, return items to their proper locations. Place the pens in holders, organize the documents, and put binders back on the shelves.
Afterward, to prevent germs, consistently wipe down your desk with a disinfecting cloth. You can assist in keeping your environment orderly for long periods by cleaning out every day.
Indeed, the most significant adjustment you can make to avoid clutter is to adopt a new practice of maintaining cleanliness and discipline. Whenever a new item enters the workplace, like a mail piece or new paperwork, identify what you intend to do with it right away, or at the very least before the end of the working day.
To help you decide where to store a new item or document, go back to the keep-archive-trash location and check where it belongs.
Visit our 50 types of office equipment guide for more related content.
