How to Organize Your Office: Workplace Organization Ideas
If your work schedule experiences a lull between Christmas and New Years, experts have plenty of ideas on how to use that time productively.
One of the most effective uses of work downtime during the holiday season is to get your workspace organized and decluttered. We tapped into professional organizers to uncover their top strategies and product recommendations so you — and your workspace — can start 2020 with a literal and figurative clean slate.
Beware of Clutter-Creep
“I often see a buildup of clutter on desk surfaces, file trays that turn into stacks, overly pinned bulletin boards, bulging shelves, etc.,” says Jennifer Truesdale, owner of STR8N Up Professional Organization Services in the greater Charleston, SC area. “Many times the user slowly adds elements to areas and then ends up closing their eyes, as it was a gradual process to clutter up.” If you have a system to prevent waste buildup, you won’t find yourself trying to tackle a huge mess.
Give everything its own place
“Assign a house to everything. It’s a lot easier to store something when you have a specific place for it,” says Susie Hayman, owner of In your company Professional organization services in the greater Richmond, Virginia area and president of the National Association of Productivity and Organizational Professionals. This includes, she adds, things you don’t really know what to do with or need to revisit later.
Don’t assume the best desk is a bare desk
While Minimalism à la Marie Kondo might work better for some people, it’s not the only answer to a tidy workspace. “Someone who is a very visual processor wouldn’t do well if it was all hidden,” Truesdale says. If you fit this description, she advises using a color-coded filing system so you can keep track of your work at a glance.
The trick to tackling cases: divide and conquer
The trick to creating a really useful filing system is to create big categories and then break them down into more specific categories, Hayman says. “Use hanging folders for categories and folders for subcategories,” she says. “Keep your file tabs left or right justified; do not stagger them. Develop a color coding system,” she advises — and put everything in alphabetical order.
For more space, think vertically
“I find using vertical desktop filing cabinets on the desk to be the best way to keep current work files organized and accessible,” says Truesdale. “In stacks, things tend to get lost, but when tabbed vertically, your eyes are drawn to the labels.” Horizontal stacks, she adds, also take up more space and can more easily overflow and encroach on other areas.
Put an expiration date on your documents
With the new year on the horizon, Hayman offers timely advice on what to throw away. “If you haven’t looked at it in a year or it’s expired, it probably doesn’t need to be in your active files or on your desk,” she says.
The right tools for the job
Hayman and Truesdale recommend the following organizing tools and supplies as the basics of a well-organized workspace:
• Unless you have an all-digital job, Hayman says a office file box with folders is essential for organizing tasks. “It should include action items, projects and to-do’s,” she says.
• Invest in drawer organizers, advises Truesdale. They’ll help you keep your items sorted by category, so you won’t waste time searching through a jumble of stuff. “Find what you need quickly without digging around,” she says.
• Hayman says if you use a paper planner or calendar, a desktop computer is the best bet. She suggests Scheduler Block, bullet journal, Full Focus Planner or the ARC staples system.
• Even though you’ve replaced paper with electronic files, Hayman says old-fashioned time telling has its merits. “A analog clock helps with time management because you can actually ‘see’ the time go by,” she says.
• Finally, Truesdale says she swears by the following supplies for keeping a tidy workspace: Transparent pocket folders, rubber bands, paperclips, sticky notes and file folders.
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