OFFICE ORGANIZATION
Today is the infamous Tax Day for many, meaning many of us have spent recent weeks getting our files in order and realizing what does and doesn’t work in our office organization strategies! This week, I want to take a moment to offer up a few helpful hints that will keep you on track for the next fiscal year and beyond, bringing a few of our favorite closet organization strategies into the office, as well as some professional recommendations to keep your office looking great and functioning at its prime!
PURGE THE PAPER
It’s 2021, and we have so many options at our disposal to kill the paper clutter! While you should probably keep a consistent paper trail of some expenses and necessary documents, almost everything in your office can be kept in a cloud! Invest in a simple scanner and free up all that filing cabinet space for something else. Receipts, tax papers, and the like should be scanned, follow a logical filename system, and stay in folders in the cloud for easy access. This way, even in the event of a hardware failure, your documents are safe and sound — perhaps even safer than having a hard copy on hand! For more personal or proprietary items, consider an external drive where you can back up these items and keep them offline.
COLOR-CODE
As business owners, many of us have several categories of documents to deal with, making it all the more critical to keep things in order. Much like in the closet, where we organize by color for easy access, you should develop a color coded system in the office to separate personal documents from business, property-related paperwork, etc. These could live in colorful folders on a stylish desk caddy, or if you’re comfortable making the leap to digital, you can assign color-coded markers, folders, and flags to almost everything! Change the colors of your folder icons on your desktop to make things simpler (and a little more fun to look at)! The same can be done in your email inboxes — flag incoming items or important archived messages using the same color-coded system!
CREATE A MAIL STATION
Regardless of how tech-savvy and paperless you strive to be, there will always be an incoming trail of snail mail to contend with! Much like in the closet, where we recommend valet hooks and staging areas to separate incoming/outgoing items from the rest of the wardrobe, it’s critical to have an organized holding area for mail in your office. Have a system for separating out junk mail, and create a well-equipped station with stamps, envelopes, tape, labels, and openers so you’re never left digging through a drawer realizing you’re fresh out of stamps!
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CHARGE UP
Many of us use our desks as a sort of home base — we keep our devices close at hand, and want them to be charged up and ready when we go out into the world. Incorporate a charging dock in your desk, whether as a desktop caddy or a more custom built-in charging drawer. You’ll want USB ports and a wireless charging pad for your phone at a bare minimum. Ideally, you might want a dedicated drawer to both store/protect and charge your larger devices — laptops, tablets, smartwatches and the like. What’s great about carving out this space in the office is that you can create a little bit of separation from these devices when they aren’t needed. Many of our clients prefer to keep these items out of the master suite, and an office charging setup seems like a fitting alternative.
ORGANIZE YOUR DRAWERS
Perhaps one of the most dramatic upgrades you can make to improve the functionality of your closet is to install custom drawer inserts! The same can be said for the office, where productivity is key. Create compartments for pens, notepads, chargers, business cards, office tools and more, so that you don’t waste precious time shuffling through a cluttered drawer, and so that you always know when it’s time for something in your desk to be replenished. Everything should have a place. Contact Us for custom drawer inserts in a variety of suede and leather color options!
UTILIZE WALL SPACE
Everything in the office doesn’t have to happen at the desk! Your desktop is valuable real estate, and there’s something to be said for keeping it as clean and clutter-free as possible. Consider the walls in your office, and incorporate new functionality that will give you reason to get up out of your chair once in a while! Depending on your field, maybe this is a wall-mounted standing work station or fabric-lined bulletin boards! Your walls are also a great place to inject a little personality into the office space, through artwork, decorative objects and mementos. Wall-mounted shelves and storage are also a must for anyone who does keep hard copies of documents, so these don’t have to take up precious space in a desk drawer, or worse, end up stacked on the floor!
