Organising office supplies is vital for a company or business. Such items include the most basic things needed to perform daily work routines.
If you’re working in an office, it’s essential to know where to find the papers, staplers, or paper clips. Besides, it can cause a little nuisance when someone in the office doesn’t know where a certain item is stored.
You will need a comprehensive guide to organise office supplies to overcome the inconvenience and confusion. Here are eight tips in an office supplies organisation to kick start your journey and keep you on track.
1. Use Containers
Office supplies include small items that are vital for your daily workflow. These can include staple pins, paper clips, binder clips, tape, pens, markers, and much more.
These objects are often left on top of desks in a complete mess. When organising supplies, it’s important to use containers to store such small office essentials. Doing so allows you to keep your working space clean and sleek.
2. Label Office Items
Working in an organised office can help create harmony among colleagues and boost productivity. But not knowing where you can find a certain item can cause delays in your workflow.
Labelling office supplies is one best way to avoid such confusion. It makes everything a lot easier when organising and finding items.
You can categorise office supplies based on their usage and size. Group small objects in one pile and put reams of paper on the same shelf.
Stick labels on your filing cabinets and drawers. It will let you and your co-workers find items quickly when you need them.
3. Maximise Office Wall Space
An office cubicle or a working area near a wall gives you extra space to place various office supplies. Utilise such corners for shelves or pegboards and organise scissors, stamps, staplers, pens, tape, and sticky notes.
If your desk is not near a free wall, you can always coordinate with your workmates to make a shared board of shelves to organise your supplies.
Using your office’s wall space lets you keep supplies at reach when you need them right away. Also, it helps you maintain a clutter-free desk.
4. Limit the Items on Your Office Workstation
If your desk has various items unrelated to work, clean them away. Since we tend to create a mess, limiting the things you keep or place in your workstation is important.
Your workspace should be as organised as possible. Remind yourself that a cluttered desk can affect your productivity. So, keep those bottles, food wrappers and cups away once you’re done with them.
Create a clean workstation by removing everything that doesn’t belong on your desk.
5. Take Digital Notes
Instead of using a bunch of sticky notes and papers to put reminders, you can go fully digital. Take digital notes using various apps. You can easily find tons of them for your convenience.
Going digital allows you to copy, paste, share and merge notes seamlessly. You can take notes faster and share information across various devices. It helps you clear the stacks of paper on your desk.
Most importantly, using less paper can save trees and the environment.
6. Store Important Items on Clear Bins
We all have those instances when we forget where we’ve placed such important items or documents. You may have forgotten where you’ve kept an office flash drive you needed for a company presentation.
To avoid such an inconvenient time, place any important item in a transparent bin. This way, you can easily locate them while keeping the clutter away.
7. Remove Unnecessary Office Items
One essential tip for an efficient office supplies organisation is to go through all the items and decide which you should keep, discard, or donate.
Clean your desk drawers and go through the piles of papers. Throw away or recycle anything you haven’t touched or used for the past six months.
Those unnecessary things and office rubbish may take up valuable office space. Hence, removing them from your stacks of office supplies is a great start. You can minimise the number of items in your office while keeping everything clean and organised.
8. Stick with Your Organisation Methods
Once you’ve done an efficient office supplies organisation, it’s essential to continue with those methods and keep your working space tidy. It’s all about how you stick with those practices for an efficient office supplies organisation.
Regardless of how busy you are, you should always have time to clean your office and store things back to where they belong. You can do quick organising at the end of the day to straighten up your office.
Use the tips that best suit your office and lifestyle. Keep in mind that the key to creating an organised office is by being consistent with your cleaning and organising methods.