Keeping Your Desk Clean And Organized Improves Your Productivity

Whether you’re working from an office, in a cubicle, or from home—increasing your productivity should be one of your main goals at work. One of the best things you can do to help improve your productivity is to keep your working area clean and organized. Here are a few tips on how to do that.

Cleaning The Desk

Especially if you are having lunch at your desk often, you’ll find that your desk space gets grubby really fast. Learn how to clean a laptop keyboard, and make sure you wipe down the entire desk. If it has been particularly neglected, you may want to remove everything from your desk and put it back. This is so you can clean away any collected dust.

Decluttering And Organizing

Preferably, also declutter your desk space. Get rid of anything that you don’t absolutely need—like that receipt for chinese food that has been sitting on your desk for weeks. If you have a lot of stuff still, you will need to develop a good storage system for your assorted things. Ideally, you should have the most commonly used items made easily accessible. Anything that you don’t use on a daily basis can be stowed away in a drawer, but make sure you have the drawers organized as well. Many people think that so long as it’s “out of sight, out of mind.” So, they end up searching through cluttered drawers even though their desk looks outwardly sleek  and organized. While you’re at it, consider organizing the files on your laptop as well. They may not be visible to the public but they will improve your productivity.

How Does This Improve Productivity?

Although filing systems are a thing of the past, we’ll use them as an example. If you have everything in your filing system neatly organized, you can pull out any file you need. Also, you don’t want to be spilling your coffee all over important documents simply because there was no space for it so you put it on a pile of folders. Organization makes every job you need to do easier to handle. And it will speed up your workflow as well. As for cleanliness, there is nothing better than a neat and clean working area to lift up your mood and encourage you to work harder.

Keeping The Desk From Getting Messy Again

It takes a lot of hard work to clean and organize a messy workspace. Once you’ve done that, you’ll want to make sure it never gets neglected again. Firstly, try to avoid eating at your desk. Stick to beverages only because they are less likely to create a mess. Also, make sure to abide by the organizational system you set for yourself. That means the mail goes into the mail drawer and the money goes into the money drawer. Taking a few minutes a day to tidy up any small mess you created as you were working will save you a lot of time in the long run.