Spring Cleaning for Your Business: 5 Tips

Spring has sprung – finally. Cleaners everywhere know the drill: flip the mattresses, clean the cupboards and shampoo the carpets. Springtime is also a good time for you to clean out and sort your office. It’s a great time to get rid of all those useless things that simply get in the way, and may, in fact, be holding you back.

All Good Projects Begin With a List…

Start your spring cleaning purge with a list of all those things you need to do before you begin. Make sure that you take care of any outstanding business so that nothing will be hanging over your head while you are getting your office or business into ship shape.

Based on things that typically serve as persistent pains in the neck for my clients, I offer the following suggestions to ensure your success:

1. Schedule – unless you carve out time for your spring cleaning project it likely won’t happen…just like last year, right? So pencil it in, small chunks or large chunks of time here and there; whatever works. Best also to keep it within a short time frame to keep your focus, like over several days or a week.
2. Tame the piles – organize the piles of files laying around and get rid of those you no longer need. You’ll breath so much easier once they’re sorted and reduced. Same goes for all your books and magazines. Be ruthless. Keep only those that you actually use. Recycle or give away the rest.
3. Sort your e-files – few things can frustrate or annoy more than not being able to find that file that you need right now. Like you paper files, your e-files can be a source of frustration and stress. Best to get on top of it all by organizing them in a way that allows you easy, pain free access.
4. Clean out your email inbox – few things can hold you back energetically quite like an inbox that just keeps expanding. Similarly, nothing can free up mental space like a clean, or cleaner, inbox. So, pitter patter, just do it. You won’t regret it.
5. Tie up loose ends – if you’re like many, some things on your to do list simply never seem to make it to the top. Now’s the time to make them a priority. Go ahead and make those small updates you’ve long been needing to do on your website, product or business cards.

And Breathe…

There now. Doesn’t it feel so much better now that your office and business is sorted? It’ll be so much easier to work efficiently now. You’ll spend much more time focused on the bigger things while feeling a lot less weighed down by those niggling, little administrivia thingies.