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Streamlining and the Family

Streamlining: You Want Your Office to Work FOR You, Not AGAINST You!

Children: Clean your room!

You Want Your Office to Work FOR You, Not AGAINST You!

Alice Fulton-Osborne
Pauline Hatch

Let’s talk about clutter (especially office clutter) and why it hurts, hurts, hurts:
• It robs us of usable space.
• It is distracting.
• It is embarrassing; we always make excuses for it and why we haven’t taken care of it.
• It robs us of confidence; we see ourselves as ineffective because we can’t seem to get on top of it.
• It is energy-zapping.
• It is disheartening, discouraging, and frustrating to work in it and around it.
• It robs us of time—we spend two full years just looking for things!
• It can be expensive—we’ll buy a duplicate of something we know we already have, but we don’t have the time to keep looking for the thing!

All this said, it begs the question, “Isn’t it time to start managing my space more effectively so that my office works FOR me and not AGAINST me?” The answer is sort of a big fat “DUH!” So here’s what to do to permanently remove everything you don’t like, use, need, want, or have room for (the clinical definition of clutter, by the way) and launch into a new and effective method of office management! It’s called streamlining (as opposed to organizing).

Streamlining is what you must do before you organize, otherwise you’re just doing “the household shuffle with things, when in fact you should be using the household shovel”—getting rid of everything you don’t like, use, need, want, or have room for (clutter, right?), rather than just moving it around and arranging it all nice and tidy-like.


So here are your 8 Streamlining Steps:

1  Prepare yourself. This will be tiring, hard, and take all day. So plan your evening meal ahead of time. Eliminate distractions (this won’t be the day to run car pool or bake cookies for your daughter’s Girl Scout meeting).

2  Get containers (large cardboard boxes or 30-gallon plastic trash bags, and smaller containers for the insides of drawers, cupboards, closets (if this applies). Label the containers to speed things along: charity, trash, someplace else, to file. Someplace else items are “keepers” (what you DO like, use, need, want, and have room for), but they don’t belong in the office. Don’t try to put these things “away” now because “away” is already full. Just set this box(es) out of the way, go to it when you need something from this box, put the item back when you’re finished using it. If it’s a home office we’re talking about, then hopefully you’ll eventually streamline the rest of the home and you’ll then create sensible places for all the someplace else items. Trust the process. It works.

3  Work in a clockwise pattern, dragging your containers with you. Touch everything in your path and ask yourself some crucial questions:

4  Always ask KEEPER QUESTIONS as part of your space management: Do I like this thing? Do I use this thing? Do I need this thing? Do I even want this thing anymore? Do I still have room for this thing? While you don’t need to answer “YES” to all the questions, you should at least answer “YES” to a couple—“YES, I use and need this thing” would be two crucial yeses you’ll always want to watch for. They’re the big kahunas when deciding what to keep and what to toss.

5  Once you find the “keepers” that belong in your office, group and store like items together. Things tend to belong to families—office supplies, office tools, instruction manuals, etc. This is the “supermarket principle” of storage—it puts rhyme and reason into your spaces.

6  Evaluate and assign. Study your office spaces regarding what they’re best suited for. Then give every single space in your office a specific assignment (label if need be, so you won’t forget). Next, load these spaces with the appropriate keeper families (see Step 5). Allow these spaces to fulfill your assigned functions and none other. This step stops the “chucking and stuffing,”—the putting something in a spot until you have time to put it away later. HAH! Big mistake. First, if we don’t have time to do it now, we won’t have time later. Second, “away” is already full, remember?

7  Keep and enjoy some empty space. Aim for minimal on surfaces (file cabinet top, desk top, credenza top, etc.). Empty out the corners. Empty space is airy, expansive, easy to maintain, and soothing to the soul. AND, it’s difficult to lose things in empty spaces—another tip for effective office management.

8  File, don’t pile. Find and use a paper management system that works for you. There are lots of good books on the subject, or you will come up with your own system. The point is, HAVE a system and stick to it. 89% to 95% of all inefficiency in offices is from ineffective paper management. So tame that paper tiger now.

As said earlier, if this is a home office you’re dealing with, then you’ll eventually want the same order and control in the rest of your home. The great book, It’s Here…Somewhere, can help you get the rest of the home streamlined down to the bare bones. You'll put the authors in your will (that would be us) because you'll be so grateful--being in control of your stuff and spaces will launch you to amazing new achievements. Let us know how it goes, and when we meet again, "May your household shovel always be full!"