Office Decluttering Tips

With the beginning of the new year, there is a heightened focus on getting organized. After all, it is good to start the year off with a clutter free, organized space that isn’t filled with lots of piles (aka distractions). When surveying your space, your immediate reaction may be a feeling of overwhelm. As figuring out where to start and what to do can be challenging, I am sharing my favorite office decluttering tips to help get you started.

Keep Your Focus Targeted

Choose a starting point. It could be a room or portion of a larger space. For example, when decluttering my client’s office, we focused on one small section in front of the file cabinets. It was piled high with empty cartons, mail, papers, and cases of water. The goal is to stay very focused on one specific space at a time.  

Office Decluttering Supplies

Depending on the amount of stuff that has collected, it could take a number of passes through the space. The goal is to be able to see the “trees from the forest”. As you systematically work your way through the piles, you’ll need bags or containers for trash, recycling, donations, shredding, items to keep, etc. Post-its and markers will also come in handy.

Make Decisions

With each pass that you do through the cluttered space, the decisions may be harder to make so be prepared. The first pass should be fast as you focus on the easy stuff…the obvious trash, documents to shred and items that are keepers. All easy decisions. As you do additional passes and can see the “trees”, the decisions may take longer to make. Your mission is to make decisions so you can continue shredding layers and ultimately clear the clutter.

Organize the Keepers

Once you have finished the passes through the space, you’ll be left with those items that are still needed. Sort them by category so that they can either be returned to their storage location or assigned a new location. Consider storage containers for smaller items like office supplies if you don’t have them. After the sorting is completed, start moving items to their respective storage locations. The goal is to get all the keepers put away before moving on to your next activity.  I hope that these office decluttering tips help with your office re-organizing project. If you need an additional tip or two, let’s talk.