As someone who works in a fairly small home office making sure my workspace is clear is essential to me keeping organised. Take a look around at your workspace…does it look like the proverbial bomb-site? If so you will be able to get some benefit from reading this post.

Make A List

Take a post it note (or sticky notes on Windows PC’s) and write down the order you need to do things in today. If you have paperwork on your desk put it in one pile in the order of the to-do list. This will help you keep on track and know where everything is.

Paperless Office

As much as people strive to have a paperless office, we’ll never truly have one. Most invoices are now received via email, what’s the first thing you do when you receive it? Print it out. There’s no need to. I’ve invested in a 24″ widescreen monitor which has helped massively because I can now display documents on one half of my screen and have my accounts program open on the other side. This is very productive as you don’t need to keep constantly looking down at the hard copy of an invoice. It will also save you money in terms of printer paper and ink

Data Back-Up

If you cannot work by displaying invoices on-screen, there will come a time when you need to file them away. Records must be kept for 6 years, and that’s a lot of paperwork and shelf space. There are many companies now that offer to scan your documents onto DVD’s as searchable PDF files for easy retrieval. I recently looked at this during my day job and 5 years worth of documents would fit onto 1 dvd! If you are unable to outsource the scanning of the documents from the start of your next financial year aim to scan everything when you receive it and back it up to DVD/USB stick. It really does save a lot of space and time when searching for something later.

Clean Desk

Always leave a clean desk when you have finished for the day. There’s nothing worse than coming in to work the next day to be greeted by mountains of paperwork. If some work is left over, put it in a drawer and leave yourself a reminder of what needs to be done.

These things may be hard to get to grips with at first, but if you stick with them you’ll probably be a lot happier in your workspace and also a lot more organised.

What do you do to keep a clean desk?