Now that Spring has arrived, it’s a good time to clean house. This action can make you more efficient and save you money as well. Spring cleaning for your equipment is covered in an earlier blog.
Spring cleaning your desk
ADP offers 6 compelling reasons to maintain a clean workspace:
- Increase productivity (instead of wasting time hunting for a mislaid item)
- Reduce workplace stress
- Improve professional image
- Improve the company’s image among business partners and customers
- Establish an environment of cleanliness
- Security
With the growing use of open space in many companies, cleaning up your desk is more important than ever. You may be sitting on a mound of paper, such as articles you’ve clipped and intended to read. You may have files strewn around your floor. Take the time to review what’s on hand and jettison what you admit to yourself you’ll never read or need in the future. Place needed papers into storage files that you can access if and when needed.
Your data and other information
How many thousand emails are sitting in Outlook? How many old projects are sitting on your hard drive? Take the time to clean house. This will save you time when searching for people, projects, etc. Ideas:
- Delete unneeded messages. If you’ve saved old emails because you thought you’d revisit them later on, ask yourself if this is really so. Surely, if they’ve been languishing for a year or two, it is probably time to admit you don’t need them and can delete them.
- Use folders for emails. Create folders in which to store old messages that you need to retain.
- Save old projects on thumb drives or in the cloud. Remove them from your hard drive to free up space and to eliminate files that you’d otherwise include in searches.
Your inventory
Items sitting on your shelf for a long time or stored endlessly in a warehouse are costing you money. The longer you delay disposing of old inventory, the more it costs you. Spring cleaning for inventory can include:
- Sales. Deep discounts can move merchandise. But beware of terms like “liquidation,” “clearance,” and “close out,” which have a negative connotation and imply that something is wrong with the merchandise or your company.
- Donations. Depending on the nature of your items, you surely can find organizations (e.g., schools, shelters) that will appreciate your donations. Consider donating through NAEIR.
- Give-aways. Again depending on what you sell, old inventory may be useful as promotional items to spur sales of your new inventory. Alternatively, you may be able to bundle old items with new ones and sell as a single unit.
If you have food inventory, you can donate it and get a good tax write-off. The food must be apparently wholesome and the food must be used only for the care of the ill, the needy, or infants. Check out IRS rules on donations of food inventory.
Conclusion
Clutter organizer Peter Walsh says “Spring cleaning doesn’t have to be a dreaded list of chores. It can be a rewarding experience that helps provide some structure and organization in your life.” If you approach the project with a good attitude, you’ll get through it easily and enjoy having a more organized work environment.
