Reduce office clutter for 3E’s in Life!

There is a direct co relation between productivity and clutter; clutter can really influence the way you work. If a person is disorganised, it makes hard to work, not to forget the perceptions of your professionalism. Productivity decreases when clutter increases, it creates lot of chaos!! Therefore by reducing the office clutter you can work on the 3 E’s i.e. Economy, Efficiency and Effectiveness in your lives.

The National Association of Professional Organizations says paper clutter is the No. 1 problem for most businesses. An average person wastes 4.3 hours per week searching for papers, which leads to disorganization and information mismanagement, this adds stress and frustration to the workplace which decreases the level concentration and creative thinking! And hence productivity impacts! Therefore it impacts Efficiency, because you have lost precious 4 hours which could have helped in preparing another presentation, or accounting analysis or just coming up with a new idea.

Research also says one hour of productivity is hampered per day while searching for missing information. A cluttered workspace saps your energy! This automatically impacts the Economy of doing things, the days lost if put together could result in huge losses to the organisations!

Similarly the stress and the feeling of inundated with work due to the clutter on the desk can lead to depression, eventually impacting the Effectiveness at work. The quality of output would drop as soon as you have stress of working which could have been avoided only if you had kept your desk clear!

Therefore to avoid all these issues and bringing the 3E’s back in your life, here are few tips which can help in de-cluttering your workplace:

Focus on the pain area- Toss and recycle papers or things which are not needed! Projects and assignments which are completed and not needed any more should be put in shredder. Get large boxes which you can label and stack them in Alphabetical order for easy access! Divide your workplace into zone and target each zone at one time.

Re-Evaluate Your Belongings- You need to decide what all things you need on your desk, unwanted items increases because our brain tricks us that we need everything and its important! When you start to sort out things ask yourself do you actually need this, ask questions like its purpose, is it outdated? you are keeping it because you need it? Or because you might need it? Asking such questions to yourself will surely help you in getting rid of unwanted stuff.

Organize desk by importance- The stuff which is important and is used often should be kept in front drawers and the things which are not used on daily basis should be kept in a drawer further away. It is very important to have quick access to things that are used most, this also showcases your professionalism, that you know where is the stuff placed and you have quick access when a senior is around you and watching your work etiquettes!

Tame your Cables- this is a very important step when it comes to organising workplace, the mess of the wires should be sorted may be by putting it under the table or at the top with all the other cable wires. There are many cable sorting tools available in the market, this makes your desk look neat and not to forget this a much safer way of working. The cables on the desk quite easily becomes a hazard and should be dealt with carefully.

Enlarge your workspace- though it gets a bit difficult to enlarge your workplace keeping in mind the lease, boss permission etc., but here are few tricks which you use without troubling others. To increase your storage space in a small room,one can go vertically to increase space in small room raise up your monitor, and make use of the space under your desk, every inch of space should be used to have to your advantage. One can also consult a local interior designer not a fancy one but a person who can guide you and help you in utilising every inch.

Regular decluttering exercise- It’s very important to follow these steps every 15 days in order to maintain the workplace, it can’t happen that you do it ones a year, doing it on a regular basis will help you maintain all the things. Hence de cluttering plays a very important role in every workplace, and will make you feel like organized office—and you—feeling serene and efficient. Therefore follow these very simple steps and bring back the most important 3E’s back in your life.