Getting rid of office clutter by Need A Space self-storage

I don’t look forward to facing my desk on a Friday morning. The first thing I will see is the in-box which has gradually expanded to overload over the past week, while the outbox slowly spreads itself menacingly over available space. If I am honest with myself, there is probably a few months of stuff hiding at the bottom of the pile which has gone from urgent to useless because it hasn’t been touched.

As much as this is about work overload on my part, it is also about how, even in a world where we should be keeping a keen eye on our uses of paper for the sake of sustainability issues, our processes and systems still seemed to get clogged up with read or unread material.

Online vs paper copy

Now, we are blessed with the internet and online communications, the need to put all documentation on paper is greatly reduced. If you receive an attachment by email, you can read it online. If you need to keep it for corporate reasons then it can also be stored on your computer or in the cloud.

However, we are still troubled with masses of paper on our desks. Some of it is meant to be owned in the form of a package. This would apply to information about a company perhaps, training manuals, or reports. It may be information that needs to be taken to and read at, up- and-coming conferences. It may be promotional materials which are better viewed physically than on the web.

The outbox is more important than you think

Some of it you need to keep and some of it could do with shredding. But as my outbox often signifies (all the documents will need to be filtered as to where they go next), that part of the process, because it is low on the must do list, often gets left and never happens.

Perhaps it’s the outbox that is the problem? In a sense, the outbox has no urgency, and sometimes it seems like the stuff within it does not really have anywhere to go. We need it because it just gives us a warm feeling of all the work we have done!

Bin the outbox!

Let’s get rid of the outbox. When we deal with documents from the inbox we should send them on their way there and then. Either they are going to filing or they are going to shredding. Simple. A cleaner desk – streamlined processes. 

So, then we come to the filing. Even though we have now reached the stage where you can sign documents online they are not officially accepted in most circles as official, legal documents. Also, there always will be documents which need to be kept in paper form such as Tax documents, financial documents, contracts, client files, certificates and legal documents.

Filing, archive and office storage space

So when documents are needed to be kept for many years, we come to archive. Both these factors – filing and archive – can have a massive impact on office space. We are obviously not just referring to your out-box here. We are talking about losing whole rooms to filing and archive. Clearly the work space you have in your company is one of your company’s greatest assets and it could be going to waste as we speak.

At Need A Space self-storage, we offer secure units where you can save your business archive at highly competitive rates. Based near Canterbury we service areas such as Faversham, Herne Bay and Sittingbourne. We also have companies from London using our storage sapce as they find storing outside of London is great deal cheaper. To find out more about what we offer click here