7 Office organization strategies and tips

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You might always be postponing the task of organizing your office thinking you do not have enough time to do the job. However, if you really took time to know how much time disorganization can cost you, you would reconsider about postponing this important job. Re-arranging and moving away the piles once in awhile does not count as organizing. Neither does clearing off your desk or your desk drawer counts as organizing too. A neat and organized office space is the one which increases your productivity and less time wasted in office.

Office organization does not take days, it can be completed in little time, if you know how to do it cleverly. Maintaining an organized office is quite easy if you treat it as an ongoing job, instead of treating it as a massive assault. The following are some strategies and tips for office organization:

 

  1. Spot the troubled areas

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It is hard to look at your work space objectively and identify how disorganized and cluttered it is. Click a few pictures of your disorganized office, you will be surprised at what you find, from a different perspective, clutter will spring up in a way you do not notice every day. If you cannot find the troubled spots, clicking pictures to find them and then write down your plan of action.

 

  1. Purging

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You must de-clutter, shred, empty and get rid of all the things you do not require and which are no longer in use to you. Take a look around in your office. Make a list of all the things which you have not used in some while. Target one area at a time and if it does not work for you, send the item for repair or just discard it. If you have not used an time for months and have really forgotten its purpose then the best place it should be is out of your office. You should deal in the same way with the equipment, supplies, office furniture, decorations and plants. Unused things covered in an inch of dust will make your office look like an old dilapidated place.

  1. Create a mail and printing station

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In order to control the paper in your office, you must have a mail station. If you do not have one then you must make room for one to stay organized. Make a folder for the incoming and outgoing mail, mail to file, bills etc. When you receive a mail, immediately file it in the mail station. Then weekly once, look at the folder for a few minutes going through each folder. Remove the old ones which you do not have to refer to in the future and discard them and make room for the new ones.

As printer and printing supplies are an important part of the office work. You have to designate a space in your office for housing the printer and printer supplies. If you have a wireless printer, then do not place it on your work desk. If you place it on your cabinet or other place in your office, you will have more space on your desk for much more important things.

  1. Widen your work space

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If you have a lot of vital stuff which cannot place on your work desk, the next best thing you can do is enlarging your workspace, if you cannot then the least you can do is add some additional storage.  There are some strategies you can use that just buying a new shiny desk with more space. You can use the vertical space for enhancing your space for storage in a small office room. You can raise up the computer monitor, use the under desk space. You have to use every little space cleverly and take advantage of it, but the important thing is you keep it organized. This way you will have more space and stay organized at the same time.

 

  1. Clear the cable mess


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Cables are wild and tangles messes if you leave them unorganized. Organizing the mess that cables of different appliances create under your office desk is quite a bit of a task. But you can real deal with it and succeed with simple tricks. You can use the rain gutters, which are cheap and yet effective ways of cables management, you can also buy cable box which is designed for managing cables. If every other attempt made by you fails then you can display those messy cables in a creative way when hiding the mess is not a option for you.

 

  1. Binders

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Papers are the most important clutter in an office and it makes your office look disorganized. To prevent this you can create binders. These binders will provide you all the information when you are in need of it and you do not have to go through all the papers.

  • Tender binders- these will have all the information on the tenders your office has placed on.
  • Manuals- you can store all your manuals in one place in this binder. Separate the binders by sub-categories like electronics, appliances etc.
  • Employees- this binder is for the information on your employees, their salary details, qualifications and other stuff.

 

7. Clean Up Time

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Staying organized does not mean you have to spend hours and hours and it is not a large time commitment. At the end of the day, you will have just 10-20 minutes before you are ready to leave for the day, place things back in their designated place. You must file all papers in their right file folders or plastic container, place your phone back in its right place, turn off your computer, place all the pens in your pen holder. All this takes just 8-10 minutes. Then you must write a to do list on the white board in your office. This will help you the next day when you walk into your office, as everything you need will be in their right places and you will know what you need to accomplish for that day. This will save you effort and time organizing your office at the end of the week.