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Waste Time - Waste Money - Get Stressed! - 26th July 2016
So often with my small business clients office space (or lack of it) is a major challenge. Lots of these businesses are after all, home based or on a tight budget regarding premises.
Running out of space ends up being a huge drain on your resources. Especially your time. Time spent looking for things. Time spent trying to tidy the space. Every task takes so much longer than it should. Worse than that, we all know - Time is Money!
There are two common knee jerk reactions to running out of space - but in my view there is a much better solution.
Knee jerk reactions and why they don't work
Option 1: Shut the door and work in another room - that won't work for long, for a variety of reasons. You'll need to go back into your main office to source information and content and you won't be able to find what you want. Equally, you will inevitably transfer the problem to another room. This will not only ramp up your stress levels, it will impact on either family members or colleagues as you consume their space.
Option 2: Rent off-site storage space. This will only work if you use the storage in a very organised way. Moving your muddle and storing it off-site will only add to your woes. When you need something how will you ever know if it's in your office or at the storage facility? You could end up wasting a lot of time driving to-and-fro getting even more stressed.
Note how both these approaches consume valuable time. Time you probably don't have to spare. Think of what you're worth per hour and then think about how much time you're wasting in your current situation.
There is another way . . .
My recommendation to anyone in this situation is always to declutter. At least as a first step. 'But I need everything!' I hear you cry. Do you? Do you really?
I have learned a lot from my clients in regard to what business owners are likely to have kept that is simply taking up space. I can assure you that in all cases, once we really took a good hard look at their office content we soon had a big pile of papers to either recycle or shred. Not just papers either - all manner of other items that in the cold light of day - weren't needed!
If you've been in business for more than a couple of years I really recommend a purge of your office contents.
What can go?
All businesses evolve over time. You have more than likely got stored content that was really relevant during your start-up phase, but is now just gathering dust. Some clients have kept content in relation to former employed roles. Almost as a way of bolstering confidence. If your business is a success now, do you really need to be reminded of your old boss?
Are you hanging onto any expensive mistakes? Pricey trade directories? Out of date software? Manuals? Broken printers? Course notes and materials that you no longer refer to?
Trust me, I've seen them all and helped the owners part with most of it! This is always done responsibly and the nett result is much more space for things that are really important in the business.
If you know your office is in need of a bit of decluttering then do get in touch for a chat with absolutely no obligation.
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Keywords: office chaos, organise office
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