When was the last time you took the time to organize your desk? Nearly 60 percent of respondents to a recent survey stated the a clutter-free workspace improves productivity.
Workplace disorganization commonly leads to lost time (47%), meeting tardiness (16%) and missed deadlines (14%) according to the same survey by Office Depot.
On the flip side, you might argue that you don’t have the time to clean up your workspace while you’re running to meetings and trying to keep up on work. After all, organizing can seem like a huge task.
We’ve put together a list of 5 ways you can start to de-clutter your workspace in 15 minutes or less to help you get started.
- Start over with your belongings.
Right now— get up and grab a box. Now, take everything in your drawers and on your desk, put it into a box and get back to work. Keep the box under your desk. As you need an item, move it back onto your desk. If there are items left in the box after a week or so, re-evaluate them to determine if there’s actually a purpose for keeping it. - Give everything you own a home.
If you don’t have a specific spot for your ruler or a place to put your coffee cup, it’s more likely to end up feeling like clutter. Give everything that you have on your desk an assigned place so you can quickly put it away after using it. - Clean up your workspace every evening.
Just like you probably clean up your living space at home before you go to bed, take a minute to straighten up your workspace each day before you leave. This will help to ensure your clutter never gets too out of control, and also will allow you to start each day fresh. - Organize your computer desktop while you’re at it.
You might find your computer desktop or My Documents folder is even worse than your physical desktop. If that’s the case, take time to develop a good organization system on your computer. Then, try your best to stick to it and place files in the appropriate folders as you create them. - Don’t let it pile up.
Hopefully, with your new organization strategy in place you won’t have piles on your desk. But if you do, try to sort through the piles at least once a week and keep only the important documents.
While it may seem like organizing your desk will be a huge feat, you can start getting organized in just a few minutes a day by using one or all of these simple tips.