Tips to reduce and tame workplace clutter

NEW YORK (AP):

It starts with a Post-it note scrawled with a reminder. Then a chocolate bar you’ll probably eat later. An extra charging cord or two find their way into the mix, along with a laptop, a folder full of projects, a lanyard from a recent conference, and a permission slip sent home from school.

And soon, the pile of things on your desk that are set aside for later becomes a giant, overwhelming stack.

The chaos of modern life and the ease of accumulating cheap items through online shopping have contributed to an abundance of clutter. That’s true in home offices and traditional workspaces alike. And those jumbles of misplaced belongings can drain our mental resources, distracting us from work and dragging down our productivity.

There are many reasons we accumulate clutter. Sometimes we don’t know where to put whatever’s landed in our hands. Other times a paper represents a task — whether it’s paying a bill or making a phone call — that we can’t tackle right away.

A messy workspace can be intimidating. But you don’t have to tackle it all in one day. Here are some tips to help.

START BY SORTING

Many professional organisers suggest sorting objects of the same category together. That way, you can see how much of each group you have and let go of any extras. After gathering office supplies, you may find you have more staplers or charging cords than you’ll ever need.

Sort on a clean surface such as a folding table and set up bins for trash, recycling, and papers to shred. Bankers boxes are convenient for sorting, and you can label them with sticky notes for categories such as electronics, office supplies, and keepsakes, he said.

Once you have sorted items into categories, then go through each box to eliminate what you don’t need.

TACKLING PILES OF PAPERS

When facing a mass of paperwork, consider whether you’re legally required to keep certain files. Divide papers into four groups: running files, which you need to act on; sitting files, which you need to access regularly; sleeping files, which you need to keep just in case but can store remotely; and dead files, which you no longer need.

DIGITAL DECLUTTERING

When organising digital files, take the same approach as paper: Sort into categories then reduce. Work in short bursts of time to prevent decision fatigue.

With presentations, delete drafts and keep the final product. If you have photos of an event, choose the best two or three and delete the rest. With email, ask yourself, “Will I need this email again to get my job done? Will it provide knowledge or motivation for future work?” If the answer is no, delete it.

In some email programnes, you can automatically send mail from a specific client or team into a folder. If you have thousands of unread emails, you can move those to a digital archive at the end of the year.