Desk organisation is essential. It doesn’t matter if you work at home or you have an office job. A tidy desk will make you more productive, and make it easy to find everything. Here are six important desk organisation tips that you need to do right now.
Clear Everything
You need to start from scratch, so clear everything you can off the desk and out the drawers. The only thing you may not be able to remove is your computer.
That’s okay; you’ll only need to put that back on the desk anyway. Just put everything in one pile on the floor for now. It’s much easier to start with a blank canvas.
Get Rid of the Rubbish
Now it’s time to go through everything on the floor. Bin anything and everything that you don’t need. This is more than just getting rid of old receipts (as long as you really don’t need them) and the orange peel you’ve been leaving.
You need to go through the paperwork and just get rid of anything you really don’t need. Be honest with yourself to reduce the amount of stuff you need to work with for the next stages.
Only Essentials on the Desk
Keep the items on top of your desk to a bare minimum. Have a couple of pens if you must and a notebook, but you want to keep everything else out of the way.
Your drawers are perfect for everything else! This will depend on your job, though, so it is a personal stage.
Can You Scan Anything?
Go through the paperwork and try to eliminate as much from your desks as possible. Could you scan anything in and keep it on the cloud? Cloud storage is extremely useful, especially since you can then do your work from home if you struggle to get into the office one day.
You’re not going to be able to scan absolutely everything in, but work on as much as possible. Don’t keep paper duplicates, either. Make sure the papers goes straight in recycling afterwards.
Daily Items in the Top Drawer
Anything that you use on a daily basis but you don’t need in arms reach should be in your top drawer.
This will be things like your paperclips, most of your pens and your scissors. You want to be able to pull the drawer open and grab it without being able to look for it. Keep everything else out of this top drawer, except maybe your snacks for the day.
The Weekly/Monthly Items
Now this will depend on the amount of desk drawers you have. Put anything that you need on a weekly or monthly basis in the drawer down from the top one and below. Work on a necessity basis.
The items you use most often but not on a daily basis should be in the second drawer, and the things you need on a very rare basis should be in the bottom drawer.