Regardless of the industry, tidying an office can be quite challenging. The generation of trash seems endless. One of the major sources of trash is office supplies. Of course, businesses cannot just stop buying these supplies to get rid of office trash. That’s why the logical solution is good management.

Minimise or avoid wastage

Companies buy office supplies as part of the basic needs of business operations. They are not obtained for free, so it is important to be mindful in using them. With this mindset, most people tend to become more mindful of their consumption of office supplies.

Clutter is reduced when waste is minimised. Clutter exists because of things that are no longer used or needed. These are unimportant items that employees or workers abandon. To avoid having them around, it is advisable to limit supply use to the basic needs. 

Go digital

If documents or records can be kept in digital format, there is no reason to continue printing physical copies. The same goes for official communication. Piles of documents or printed correspondence can be avoided by going digital.

Most of the waste in an office is made of paper, which includes memos, erroneous prints, bad photocopies, mails, and old reports. All of these are avoidable. All it takes is to embrace digitalisation.

Digital copies are easier to store and access. Multiple copies of them can be saved in different locations to ensure that they will not be lost. They can also be stored in the cloud so that they can be accessed from anywhere. 

If there are mistakes in the creation of a document, corrections can be made easily. There is no need to print a new copy again and waste more office supplies. Likewise, if volumes of documents are stored digitally, they are much easier to access. With a good file explorer application, all it takes is to type in some keywords to find the required document.

Meetings can also be made efficient by doing them virtually. There is no need to use whiteboards and markers to conduct meetings. Many virtual tools allow meeting participants to interact and do presentations better.

Adopt a policy of recycling

It helps when a workplace has a strictly enforced policy of recycling. For example, instead of using new paper for preliminary reports or presentations, the blank backs of used paper can be utilised. If everyone is trained to prepare things they use in an office for recycling, it will be nearly impossible to have clutter lying around an office. It should not be too much to ask employees to follow the rules to help maintain a clutter-free workplace.

In summary

Clutter can be avoided or minimised by reducing the amount of waste and motivating everyone to embrace a recycling mentality. Likewise, digital transformation is an excellent solution to veer away from clutter. These are simple but highly effective ideas that can go a long way in keeping the clutter away.