2 Pocket Folders

If you’re like many people, you have an office where it takes you a couple of minutes to find almost anything that you need. Over a year that can add up to around six to eight weeks of total time just looking for things amongst your mess. With that amount of time at stake, you really can’t afford not to make some basic efforts to tidy things up.

Rule number one is that you desk is for working on, and should be clean of any storage items. To make your desk clean and clear, make space in your desk drawers or other storage spaces in the office and move everything from your desktop to there. Being able to work in a clean space on your desk will already make a huge difference to your productivity.

The second thing to deal with is all of your papers and documents which are probably lying around in a hundred different places. Start by sorting them into three piles – papers you are still working on, papers you aren’t working on but want to keep, and papers which you can throw out. The last group is pretty obvious, but the first two require a bit more organization.

Your papers that you need handy and are still working on can be stored in many ways, but one of the best is a series of plastic drawers or trays which sit on your desk. This keeps them handy but organized, and you can label the trays so you know what’s what. It’s also possible to use manila folders within the trays to keep things even more in order.

For papers that you essentially want to archive, two pocket folders are an excellent storage solution. They let you keep whatever you need in whatever way you want, and because they are cheap and easy to get you can create as many different groups and files are you need to have things organized in a way that makes sense for you.

The last thing is to implement a good filing system, without which all this work would be for nothing. A filing cabinet, set of drawers or shelves are ideal, depending on what you have available and what the layout of your office is like. No matter what though, try to make the filing system reachable from where you sit, as not having to get up will make you much more likely to use the system.