Declutter Your Office and Keep Your Files Within Easy Reach
One of the most annoying things in a workplace–and indeed, any kind of space–is the amount of clutter that tends to grow over time. It’s a big mystery how they pile up and where they all come from, and by the time you really take a step back and pay attention to the clutter, it’s too late and it will really be needing your attention just to get started on clearing up.
A major clutter culprit is paper, whether it’s your receipts, little notes you scribbled to yourself, those small Post-Its you stick on your monitor, corkboard, or cubicle walls, or stacks of documents, reports, and photocopies. We all tend to hang on to papers, because we never know when we’ll need them whether as reference or as proof that something was already done or submitted. But this means that we just end up having mountains of paper in our workspace, and that makes it difficult to find a particular document when you need it.
The solution is, of course, to get rid of the papers cluttering up your surroundings. You need to make the time to sit down and sort them all out, one by one and by type. The important documents–contracts, reports, important records, etc.–are easy enough to organize; choose a drawer from one of your flat files and make that the storage compartment for files of that particular type.
Then you have to pool together all the small pieces of paper and see which ones among them are still absolutely necessary and which ones have just been lying around and messing up your space. Chuck old receipts into the waste bin, as well as notes and reminders for projects and events that have been finished long ago. Collect any scratch paper you have lying around and put them together in one envelope labeled “scratch paper” so you can easily get one when you need it, rather than scrambling around for a fresh sheet of paper any time you need to take notes or jot down a reminder.
Getting your papers organized is an absolute must in any job and workplace. If you’re a doctor or you work in a clinic, keeping patient records and information is part of the job, and many clinics and hospitals usually employ a paperless system nowadays. Nevertheless, others still opt to keep hard copies of these files, and if your clinic still does this, then you should store them inside medical file cabinets, which are designed for easy access and can keep papers and folders neatly stacked.
With a little time and effort, you’ll find that you have gotten rid of all the surplus papers at work, and you’ll end up with a neater workstation. Just make sure to throw away unnecessary papers as they come in so you don’t have to endure the cleanup again in the future.
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