A clean desk and office are a sign of a clear mind. Being tidy is more than menial work and a daily chore. It can provide plenty of benefits that help during your daily routine. Tidy, clean and organised are the three pillars of a competent worker. It reflects on your state, but it also sends a clear message to the world. Always start with yourself when comparing. How would you look at a person that has a pigsty instead of an office? Now apply the same to you. The best time to start is right now, so let’s get cleaning.
1. Paperless concept
Apart from the obvious upside where you are doing Mother Nature a favour, there are other upsides. One is that your costs go down since you don’t have to buy paper and printer cartridges all the time. One less item to worry about is the natural extension of a paperless office. No documents are flying around, there is no need for a storage or file system and waste is almost gone. What more can you ask from a single change?
2. Cable management
Your PC has a cable for its monitor, mouse, keyboard, and sound system. All of these need a power outlet. If you have a video projector thrown in the mix, you have a recipe for spaghetti cable management. Simple, discrete cable holders keep them in place and tidy. Now you can clean easily, know which cable is for what, and they stop being a safety hazard.
3. Outsourcing
One pair of hands can only do so much. Even if you ask all of your employees to regularly clean around their work desks, this job can still take a lot to take. Putting it all on paper reveals that the costs only keep ramping up. The time and energy of your employees are far better spent doing their jobs than cleaning. Reaching out to carpet and upholstery cleaning companies solves your cleaning needs with a single call. As they take over, you don’t need to worry about cleaning items on your checklist and can devote all those resources to other, more meaningful, tasks.
4. Decluttering
Any desk can look like a treasure trove of items. Seemingly significant or insignificant, from smaller to bigger, it’s easy to lose control and oversight and pile up. One corner soon spreads to another, and before you know it you have the dreaded “organised mess”, which is a myth. Utilising drawers and cabinets should be encouraged as that’s why they are made.
Plan B can be minimalism in office work. Asking yourself and your employees “Do I need this item here?” makes all the difference. “No” and “Maybe someday” means that the item goes in the bin or is stored away. When your deck gets decluttered, it opens up with all that free space, and with it, your mind follows. Decluttering your workspace has been proven to boost productivity and mental health.
5. Don’t eat where you work
There are plenty of unspoken rules of what you are not supposed to do at work, and eating at your workstation should be one of them. Crumbs to food waste and packages pile up in the bin and on the table. Not to mention, it gets tedious to try and clean up after every meal. A dedicated lounge or cafeteria moves all these troubles and confines them to one room. Work culture, chatter during mealtime and employee bonding are great things to have and cultivate when compared to crumbs, dirt, discarded packages and food waste.
Any change to your surroundings comes with that first action. As the saying goes, be the change you want to see in the world. Cleanliness and hygiene have only been emphasised during these times and achieving them come easier than you think. Any action is better than none, and soon, you will be able to admire your clean, tidy and professional workplace. In it, you will create the perfect environment to give your maximum!
