3 Tips for Spring Cleaning Your Office Space
We all are guilty of leaving our desk at the office a little messier than we should and just swiping everything into our top drawer when it gets a little too much. With many of our desks moved to our own homes, unfortunately we can’t escape the mess and we might not even have the space we used to.
This work from home reality might be long term for a lot of Canadians - Statistics Canada research shows that 25 percent of Canadian businesses are 'likely' or 'very likely' to offer their employees the option to work remotely following the pandemic, while 14 percent reported that they will make it a requirement. Having a productive workspace and an organized workspace do go hand in hand - so here are three tips to get you started.
Create bins with different purposes.
Bins help to create differentiation with all the clutter. At minimum, having a garbage bin, a recycling bin and a stationary bin should be a priority. In your recycling bin, ensure that what you are throwing in there is not something that has any personal information in it. In 2012, some 17,094 Canadians were victims of identity theft. In 2014, that number jumped to 20,611, an increase of nearly 20% in 2 years. It was recently tax season, so make sure those documents are properly destroyed - we already have some tax specific tips here. Another box you should consider is one for snacks - we all had a snack drawer at work and our home office should be no exception!
2. Start to digitize your old documents.
While bins are important, you might also have an old bin tucked away with old family pictures or old home documents. What you can do to reduce clutter in your home and also ensure that you are being safe with your documents is to digitize all of these files. Make copies of your documents and upload them to a backup storage device or cloud storage. Organize them by year and by type of product and that way you always have access to documents should you need them. You can use a scanner or even a scanner app on your phone!
3. At the end of your workday, spend 5 mins cleaning your space.
This is fairly self-explanatory, but so easy to miss. If you have to put it in your calendar, just do it: the longer your procrastinate, the worse it becomes. Try to do a quick desk clean and a little bit of a deeper clean every few days; so perhaps on Monday you wipe down your desk, on Tuesday you clean your keyboard and mouse, and on Friday you empty the trash bin. Whatever is easiest to integrate into your schedule, do that, because once it becomes a habit, the maintenance is so simple.
So while things have changed a lot this year, sometimes doing a little spring cleaning might help to refocus and refresh you. Whether your job is a small pile or massive old bins, we do residential pick up for shredding. Be sure to contact us today by calling at 403 340 2401 or emailing at info@merlinshredding.com.