Very few of us cope well with clutter. Our brains are wired not to like clutter. When we are surrounded by ‘stuff’, it can be a lot more difficult to process things, and we become slow and forgetful as a result. These days, it isn’t just physical clutter that we face – digital clutter is a very real thing. It’s clogging up our computers, our company structure and preventing us from being efficient and productive. If you want to find out how you can erase all the unnecessary stuff from your business, from the items on your desk to the ideas and worries floating around your mind, then check out these tips.

Start with the physical clutter

The very first step is removing any of the unnecessary physical items in your office or workspace. This might be ornaments, machines that are no longer needed or are broken, surplus mugs and plates, piled up junk mail, out of date signs and notices and anything else that does not bring anything beneficial to the space. Think Marie Kondo here – if it doesn’t spark joy or is useful, get rid! If you have a large amount of clutter to remove, hire a skip. You’ll find that this is a great incentive to throw stuff out. You may also want to think about selling anything that is still useable to bring in some extra revenue for your business.

Go paperless

More and more businesses are opting to go paperless now. Not only does this have a positive impact on your mental health – bits of paper floating about can make people feel stressed – but it is environmentally better, and can help the whole workplace work more efficiently.  Upload or share important documents and information to your cloud services, which allows everyone to access it anywhere at any time. Stop pinning up messy notes and calendars and organize your time on a digital calendar. By doing this, you may also find that you can get rid of some more physical items – you won’t need countless filing cabinets and printers anymore!

Organize digital files

Once you have shifted, or at least organized, all of the physical clutter, it is time to make a start on the digital clutter. It can be time-consuming, but set up a strict filing system and make sure that everyone sticks to it. Create folders within folders if necessary and make sure everything is named in the same format. Spend some time devising a system that works for you – alphabetically, by client, by date – it doesn’t matter, as long as you all understand it and you stick to it.

Organize your inbox

Email inboxes are notorious for being cluttered and disorganized. Without some sort of system in place, it is easy to lose track of information and miss emails. The four folder system works well for most people – it works by having, as the name suggests, four folders, and once an email is read, it should be sorted into the appropriate one:

FYI: Important information that needs to be kept

Immediate action: Emails that need to be acted on straight away

Action today: Emails that need to be acted upon by the end of the day

Action this week: Emails that can be left until the end of the week to be dealt with

Follow some of these tips, and you’ll soon find that your space and your mind is a lot less cluttered and a lot more productive.

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