Spring sees the start of longer days and lighter mornings. A chance to reap the benefits of more natural daylight and explore nature as new leaves grow and flowers start to show. It also gives us the opportunity to spring clean our homes, decluttering and organising our space. One area that is often neglected is our home office. We concentrate on the kitchen, living area and bedrooms, forgetting that we spend a huge amount of time within our workspace, around 40 hours a week. And if anywhere gets disorganised quickly it's the home office! A clean and well-organised office can have a positive effect on our mental wellbeing and productivity. If you need a little help getting started, here are our top tips for giving your home office space a spring clean.
1. Declutter Your Desk
A sensible place to start would be your desk, which can easily accumulate clutter during your busy working week. The ever-growing pile of paperwork should be sorted into a ‘keep’ and a ‘bin’ pile. As you work through these, sheet by sheet, you should keep only what is needed. Anything else can go straight into the recycling bin or be shredded if it contains sensitive information or data. As well as work documents this includes any personal notes, receipts, and post-it notes. Your important paperwork can then be filed into a ring binder and stored neatly away in your desk drawer. Consider investing in a desk tray to keep your current paperwork in a neat pile on your desk.
2. Refresh Your Space
As the proverb goes “a change is as good as a rest”. Refreshing and reorganising our office space can revitalise our mind, helping to boost motivation, creativity and productivity. Now your desk has been decluttered, try adding a few items to personalise your space. This might be a couple of family photos, a houseplant, or even a bright and attractive calendar. Choose colours that motivate and inspire you and maybe add a motivational quote that you can keep referring to throughout the day.
3. Spring Clean Your PC/Laptop
Once your physical declutter is complete, you can move on to your digital declutter. As we get caught up in our hectic work schedule, it is easy to neglect the health and organisation of our PC or laptop. Have you been ignoring those computer update reminders? Now is the time to make sure that your computer is fully up to date.
Once your computer has updated, look through your programs and applications, and uninstall anything that you no longer use. Organise your files into categorised folders and make sure that these are all backed up on an external hard drive or in the cloud. Delete any unnecessary files and folders to free up some extra space. If you're feeling brave, take the time to tackle your email inbox, deleting any old emails and organising the rest into clear categorised folders.
If you have messy wires getting tangled up behind your computer, you can use cable clips to neaten these up. If you add a label to each wire describing the device that it is connected to, you will easily be able to locate and distinguish between them.
4. Dust Surfaces And Office Equipment
Your newly organised and decluttered space is now ready for a good clean. It is surprising how much dust can accumulate around electronic desk equipment, leading to a myriad of problems, including overheating, a reduction in conductivity and lowered performance. You must clean your electronic equipment correctly to avoid any unnecessary damage. Firstly, you must unplug all equipment before you begin cleaning it. As dust accumulates around the fan and internal components of your PC, it is important to open it up and dust inside regularly with a lint-free cloth. To make things a bit easier, you can use a can of compressed air!
Don’t forget to give your mouse and keyboard a good clean as these can harbour many germs. To thoroughly disinfect these, you should wipe them down with an alcohol-based disinfectant (containing at least 60% ethanol or 70% isopropyl alcohol) using a microfibre cloth. If your keyboard needs a deep clean you can remove the keys and use compressed air.
Lastly, wipe your monitor down, using an LCD cleaner and a microfiber cloth to remove smudges and stubborn fingerprints.
Looking To Update Your Newly De-Cluttered Space?
At Flexispot, we want you to have a home office space that lets you get the most out of your workday. You've worked hard to declutter and organise your space, but your trusty old desk and office chair are letting you down. It’s time for an upgrade! Check out our exciting range of high-quality ergonomic and stylish office solutions here.
