You spend a good chunk of your life in this space — you deserve to have it neat, clean and functional. Spring is the time-honored season to spruce up and pare down, so what are you waiting for?
Environmental. Your desk, keyboard, phone and other surfaces are probably a tad grimy and/or germy by now. Clean them with anti-bacterial microfiber cloths, cotton swabs, compressed air can and other tools of your choice. Don’t forget the computer air vents, which suck dust inside the electronics and cause a lot of damage.
Material. We bet there’s a pretty hefty load of stuff lurking in your work area that you would never miss if it was gone.
Weed out the filing cabinet
Use that new-found filing space to clear your desk of everything not being used for current projects
Scan hand-written notes and store them in the PC or cloud
Remove outdated notices from the bulletin board
Clear your drawers of excess pens, paper clips, etc.
Digital. Physical clutter kills your ability to get work done fast, and digital clutter does the same to your computer. Some areas to check for profitable de-cluttering:
Icons on your PC desktop
Old emails, both sent and received (at least, delete the attachments which you’ve probably already copied to somewhere else)
Old files (delete, compress, or archive them externally)
Inactive files in the cloud or on the server (if you’re the admin)
Now look around your newly optimized workspace and congratulate yourself! Working here will be so much easier, you’ll wonder why you put up with the mess for so long.
