A cluttered office and a messy work environment can influence how you work. Decluttering your work space can help you be more organized, efficient, and also give a more professional perception. Here are some important tips to declutter and supercharge your day, helping you get more done!
Attend a 5s event
By attending a 5s event, you will learn how to get your work spaces organized and decluttered. You will see immediate results, helping build excitement and motivation to continue improving. You’ll know how to go beyond giving your business a normal ‘spring clean.’ You’ll not only understand how to set a standardization in place, but also how to sustain it going forward. On your course, the five basic steps that will be covered include:
- Sort — you’ll know how to pinpoint items that are no longer needed in your working environment.
- Straighten — you’ll know how to organize the items left behind based on their frequency of use.
- Sweep — you’ll know how to clean the area thoroughly.
- Standardize — you’ll know how to label and sign consistently, and you’ll know what terminology. to use and rules to follow when it comes to sorting and filing.
- Sustain — you’ll know how maintain your improvement over a period of time.
Analyze What You Use
Write down a list of everything you use in your work space for the next couple of weeks. Often you will find that we keep more items in our work space than we actually need. Keep only what you use and may likely need. Put everything else in a box, donate it, or store it in a separate place for future access. One of the biggest components of decluttering is getting rid of things you don’t actually use or bring you joy.
Go paperless
Going paperless won’t just benefit the environment, it will benefit your business by reducing waste, saving time, and saving money! It will help your business become and remain organized. Your important documents will be easier to file, access, and can be more secure.
If you’re worried about having to go out of your way to scan files, worry no more. Modern mobile phone apps will allow you the chance to take professional scans of your important documents on the go.
Keep your computer’s desktop well-arranged
A simple yet effective change you can make to de-clutter your work space is to arrange and organize your computer’s desktop. Just like the desk that you physically sit at, the screen that you look at should be clean and proficiently managed. Doing this will help you to access important files far easier, and it will stop you from having to waste hours of your day searching for documents.
A good rule of thumb regarding your computer desktop is to ensure that you can see as much of your desktop background as possible. If you can’t, hide desktop icons you don’t use, organize files/shortcuts into folders, and create a system so you can quickly find everything you’re looking for—and make sure it stays nice and organized.
Make Sure Cleaning is on the Agenda
Decluttering your work space and keeping it decluttered takes time. Block off time every week to clean and declutter your work space. If you have employees, give them scheduled time to do the same. Breaking the task into chunks will make it easier to stay disciplined.
In addition to decluttering your work space, it is important to keep a clean work area, hallways, lobbies, and other common areas. You can set up a cleaning checklist and assign who has what cleaning role and what time each job must be performed. Enforce standards that employees clean up after themselves and encourage them to take pride in a clean and decluttered common work areas.
By taking the cleaning and decluttering advice laid out above, your business will become far more organized and, as a result, far more efficient. The best thing is that much of this are free and simple steps anyone can take!