It doesn't take much to be messy but it takes more than twice the time to go through the clutter and find what you're looking for. By the time we realize we've built up a mountain of rubbish, it's too late to backtrack and undo the mess. We have to bite the bullet and reorganize all the stuff. There are ways of staying neat and not having to face this situation repeatedly.

Why is there so much trash?

We are always in a rush and dump things along the way because we have to attend to other matters instantly. Without a system, we just strew things everywhere until we get the time and patience to fix up everything.

Organizing the mess is of little concern to us as we personally know where most things were thrown around. At the worst, we have a general idea where the items were last seen or last dumped, as the case may be. However, the problem arises if you cannot personally retrieve the items and you ask somebody to get them for you. Chances are the person will never find the item or at best, may locate the item after many hours of searching through the pile of rubbish. After such an ordeal, your friend may never want to find an item for you regardless of your urgent pleas. You might even lose a friend in the process. Eventually, you will end up losing documents and become more inefficient in your job.

Staying orderly and neat

Take a deep breath, sit down and think over how you spend your time at the office. You have a work place where you conduct your business functions. Take an inventory of your daily job tasks and other work that may be requested of you from time to time. Categorize your work items and documents in accordance to your work activities. This gives you a good perspective of the work documents and items you need for each of your tasks.

Archive all the documents that are no longer needed. Don't throw away anything until you are definitely sure the documents are no longer needed. By archiving the documents, you relocate them to a special storage area, where you can retrieve them if needed for future reference.

Organize and label your drawers in your desk. Put the most used items in the top drawers, such as stationery, pens and important documents. Your middle drawers should contain pending work that should be completed within the following week. They get transferred to the topmost drawer as they near their deadlines. The bottommost drawer can contain the least important items. You cannot dispose of these items as they may be needed later on. Give a timeframe for the retention of these items.

A leather briefcase like a cell phone and a laptop, have become essential accessories in the work place and in social gatherings. Briefcases are useful for employees who have to go to clients and other meetings outside of their office. Keep your briefcase orderly and nearly arranged so you don't have difficulty reaching in and pulling out the appropriate documents in an instant's notice. There's nothing more embarrassing than to have your clients or superiors waiting while you rummage through your briefcase. An imported classy briefcase gives the impression of professionalism and a prim and proper disposition. There is also sufficient space to keep your laptop and other office memoranda as long as you keep the contents organized and neatly arranged.

Keep important papers in appropriate labeled folders. Protect the information in your laptop by taking frequent back-ups and running a security virus scan. Make optimal use of your office space. If you have a small work area, try using storage units that can be mounted on walls. Put storage containers in the space beneath your table. You will lose some leg space but that is the price you pay if you want to keep so much material in your workplace.

Keep things Neat

Work place cleaning should be done regularly. You need to maintain the orderliness and neatness of your work place otherwise your efforts will be useless. Keep in mind the drawers and the documents you categorized within those drawers. Review them daily and attend to the documents based on their prioritizations. Do the clean-up exercise daily and get into the habit of keeping an orderly workplace.

You will notice an improvement on your performance as time goes by. An uncluttered workplace provides positive energy and can encourage you to do more work efficiently and effectively. You will be more focused and can concentrate better knowing that everything is in their proper place. You no longer worry about overlooking some information or misplacing a document.