If there’s one place in your home that could use a good spring cleaning after the past year, it’s your home office. For some of us, cleaning up and cleaning out is a reward in itself: there’s a lightness that comes with a well-organized space, knowing that we know longer have a stash of old receipts waiting to guilt us every time we open a drawer or a jar full of pencils with broken tips and no erasers. For others, cleaning still feels like the torture we swore it was as children. If you fall into that category, don’t look at it as ‘ spring cleaning,’ but as ‘efficiency improvement’: you’ll work faster and better in a space that’s neat and organized.
Finish What You Start
There’s nothing worse than going through a long-neglected pile only to end the day with new and different piles. Before you begin, be realistic about how much time you have. If you have a call or an appointment in 20 minutes, don’t tear the whole place apart. It’s much more satisfying and productive to have one drawer completely organized than six drawers half done and relegated to the nebulous “later,” as in, “I’ll come back and finish that later.” It can be helpful to have three boxes or bags—and your trash can—as you begin going through things: Rehome (for things that should live somewhere else in the house), Recycle/Shred, and Donate. Leave time at the end of each cleaning window to deal with the contents of those boxes.
Miles of Files
Paper is a huge source of clutter. Spring cleaning is a great time to go through your filing cabinet and shred or recycle out-of-date documents. Between the scanning function on a printer and the camera on your smartphone, it’s also incredibly easy to make digital copies of your records and get rid of the paper for good. And decluttering documents can extend to your hard drive: do you have a digital filing system that works? Consider either deleting archaic files or moving them to an exertnal hard drive to free up space.
Clean it Up
Spring cleaning definitely involves some actual cleaning. Time to scrub away a year’s worth of coffee cup rings and cobwebs. Start at the top and work your way down, dusting and wiping everything. Don’t forget glass cleaner for the windows and screen cleaner and compressed air for the smudges and crumbs on your laptop.
Move it Around
Spring cleaning is a great time to try a new furniture arrangement in your office. You might strike on a better, more productive layout: maybe moving a filing cabinet will make it easier to immediately put papers away instead of letting them pile up on your desk. Or you might simply enjoy the creative boost of a new look.
Whether you spend 40 hours a week in your home office or use it as an occasional supplement to your work outside the home, it’s a good time of year to show it a little love so it can continue to serve you well.
Finish What You Start
There’s nothing worse than going through a long-neglected pile only to end the day with new and different piles. Before you begin, be realistic about how much time you have. If you have a call or an appointment in 20 minutes, don’t tear the whole place apart. It’s much more satisfying and productive to have one drawer completely organized than six drawers half done and relegated to the nebulous “later,” as in, “I’ll come back and finish that later.” It can be helpful to have three boxes or bags—and your trash can—as you begin going through things: Rehome (for things that should live somewhere else in the house), Recycle/Shred, and Donate. Leave time at the end of each cleaning window to deal with the contents of those boxes.
Miles of Files
Paper is a huge source of clutter. Spring cleaning is a great time to go through your filing cabinet and shred or recycle out-of-date documents. Between the scanning function on a printer and the camera on your smartphone, it’s also incredibly easy to make digital copies of your records and get rid of the paper for good. And decluttering documents can extend to your hard drive: do you have a digital filing system that works? Consider either deleting archaic files or moving them to an exertnal hard drive to free up space.
Photo by Polina Zimmerman
Clean it Up
Spring cleaning definitely involves some actual cleaning. Time to scrub away a year’s worth of coffee cup rings and cobwebs. Start at the top and work your way down, dusting and wiping everything. Don’t forget glass cleaner for the windows and screen cleaner and compressed air for the smudges and crumbs on your laptop.
Move it Around
Spring cleaning is a great time to try a new furniture arrangement in your office. You might strike on a better, more productive layout: maybe moving a filing cabinet will make it easier to immediately put papers away instead of letting them pile up on your desk. Or you might simply enjoy the creative boost of a new look.
Whether you spend 40 hours a week in your home office or use it as an occasional supplement to your work outside the home, it’s a good time of year to show it a little love so it can continue to serve you well.
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