Whether working in a conventional office building or from home, smaller offices can quickly descend into absolute chaos. Whatever kind of work it is you are into, it can often be tempting to allocate all of your time to the job at hand, leaving precisely zero time to keep the office tidy and organised. This, or you may simply think that trying to do so represents fighting a losing battle…thus no sense in wasting time.
The thing is though, it is perfectly possible to make a real difference to any office of any size – even the tiniest of workplaces. What’s more, it’s worth remembering that exactly how tidy and organised any given workspace is has proven to have a direct impact on both efficiency and enjoyment.
So if you’d like to begin taking a proactive approach to the cleaning and organisation of your own tiny office space, here’s a quick look at the six most important tips to get you started:
1. Can the Clutter
First of all, the single biggest culprit when it comes to making smaller offices look and feel cramped and untidy is unnecessary clutter. What this basically refers to is absolutely anything that doesn’t necessarily need to be there, or could potentially be stored away, out of sight and out of mind. Simply look around your office right now and see how much of the detritus around you qualifies as pure clutter.
2. Storage Solutions
Following along the same lines, to ensure your mini-office has a sufficient contingency of storage solutions is to ensure that everything has its rightful place. When everything has its place, there is absolutely no reason for anything to be out of place and summarily make your office look a mess. When working with limited space, it’s a good idea to focus on the kind of furniture and fixtures that perform something of a double duty.
3. Little and Often
In terms of cleaning, technically speaking it should be incredibly easy to keep a smaller office hygienically clean. Rather than attempting to tackle the whole thing in one major undertaking once a month, think instead about giving it 15-20 minutes of your attention every day. Focus on a different area every day and you may never have to tackle the whole office, all at once.
4. Free Floor Space
A quick point but an important point nonetheless, the more open floor space you have around the office, the bigger, tidier and generally more pleasant the whole place will feel. So if there’s anything you can move or remove to free up some floor space, you might want to think about doing exactly that.
5. Let In the Light
In addition, when it comes to making a smaller office look and feel much lighter, brighter and more alive than it actually is, nothing does it better than natural light. Embrace as much natural light as possible, being sure to use sufficient artificial lighting where necessary to ensure you are not working in the dark.
6. An Occasional Purge
Last but not least, once every couple of weeks (or every month), go over your office from top to bottom and see what exactly you could do with getting rid of. All stationery supplies that are no longer of use, waste paper, odd trinkets that seem to have come out of nowhere and so on. It’s amazing how quickly random bits and pieces can build up around the office – getting rid of them frequently will help ensure things don’t get to crisis point!