Chucking a couple of sheets of paper away each week isn’t office cleaning and whether you work from home, or in an office, cleaning your workspace is proven to make you more productive. This ideas are for your personal work environment, for a proper general office cleaning you should consider to hire a professional office cleaning company. Here, there are a few tips to keep your desk clear on a weekly basis, but also some deep cleaning advice for you to complete on a monthly basis to limit infections or germs on items you may handle every day.
Have a declutter and rearrange of your office as often as you can. The piles of paper you have laying around should either be filed, in an easily accessible system, binned if non confidential, or shredded if the document contains personal information that needs protecting. This in itself should clear a lot of space.
Next, take all items off the desk, shelving and out of cabinets and drawers. Using products appropriate to the materials you’re cleaning (antibacterial wipes usually do the trick for most things). Whilst you have a clear space give all of the cupboard and door handles a wipe, you never know what germs could be lurking and you have too much work to do to be off poorly, right?
The desk equipment such as stapler and hole punch also need a wipe. Someone could have borrowed them after just visiting the loo, so go nuts and give everything a quick clean to put your mind at rest.
The majority of jobs involve a computer and possibly even a scanner and printer too. Use a microfibre cloth and some alcohol free solution to clean your screen, keyboard and mouse. Do not try to use the same multipurpose cleaner you might use in the kitchen or bathroom, as they contain chemicals that remove the protective covering on your screen, which could have expensive results.
Next, limit knick knacks to a minimum and if possible remove them from your immediate desk space. You may think they make you happy throughout the day however; your subconscious just see’s them as more clutter. As soon as your mind starts to feel overwhelmed by your working environment your productivity starts to spiral, so stash those photos of family on a shelf away from your desk. Productivity experts advise to only have your essential items at arms length from where you sit so look at every item and ask yourself whether you really need it.
Ok, so all your belongings can go back into their drawers but as you do so consider any organisational systems you could put in place to enable you to work more effectively. Could you move files that are older than 5 years to another space, for example, to clear the decks a little. Or make one ‘stationary’ drawer so you’re not struggling to find pens constantly. Things you may thing are irrelevant such as having your coat and bag slung across the back of your chair are all no-no’s as they just add unnecessary clutter to your physical and mental space.
Get clean and organised and we promise you’ll be flying through that to do list