Keeping Your Office Space Clean and Tidy

If you work from home, your office space is sacred to you. Yet it is full of discarded coffee cups and plates you’ve forgotten to remove from that sandwich you managed to grab in that five-minute break you had a few days ago. Your office space can be the most important thing when it comes to aiding with your focus, motivation and productivity. Here are the two steps that will help you keep your office space clean, tidy and ready for you to write that masterpiece.

Step One – Organisation
Be ruthless, clutter gathers everywhere but your office it is the last place you want it to be. Dispose of everything you don’t need, and move everything you don’t use regularly into storage space in your office or elsewhere in the house.
Decide on work zones. Obviously you know what your desk is for, but when there are other things you need to take care of in your office, make sure you have designated places for each. This can save time on having to adapt to the transition between different jobs.
Labels and filing are of the upmost importance. Get a good label gun, and mark everything; anything that you can’t think of a label for, you probably don’t need and should dispose of or move as previously suggested. Make sure you have a good filing system so that you can ensure that your desk won’t become the victim of a paperwork based hostile takeover.

Once you have a filing system, make sure you can then separate it into days. If you work five days a week, then have five daily folders, on top of as many miscellaneous filing systems as are necessary. Then when the Monday file is empty at the end of your Monday work, you can relax knowing that all your work for the day has been done.
Handmade solutions are very useful for cleaning your desktop. Firstly, streamline the items on your desk; keep only those things of constant necessity and paramount importance on your desk, find a place for everything else and stick to it.
Once this is complete, then the next stage is to organise everything on your desk top. Cups that aren’t used and the cardboard tubes from toilet and kitchen rolls can be very useful for organising and storing your pens and other stationary quickly and easily, making them accessible while also being out of your way.

Step Two – Keep It Clean
Set ten to twenty minutes aside every day to clean your office, and remove any cups, plates and glasses that have been collected during the day. Wipe your desk down, clean your computer and keyboard with specialised wipes. A USB powered mini vacuum cleaner is also a savvy investment for keeping your desk and keyboards looking sparkling and ready for action.
Set aside a cleaning day every week and do not deviate from it. This will become one of the most important hours of your week.

Vacuum your office, dust and polish your desk and worktops, reorganise anything that needs it (although if you follow step one this shouldn’t be necessary).
Wipe down all windows and mirrors. Keeping them sparkling and shiny will make your office seem more pleasant and fresh when you walk into it every morning.

It is easy to neglect your office. You spend so much time working there that the last thing you want is to spend more time inside the office cleaning it. But if you follow these two simple steps, your office will stay clean, and your working environment will be conducive to productivity and motivation.
Now to get back to work on that novel.