Get Organized to Start the Year Off Right

For the most part, organization involves small, day-to-day actions–picking up items before leaving a room, providing adequate storage, staying on top of daily chores so they don’t pile up. The real organizing challenge often comes with the tasks that only need to be done every few months, semi-annually, or once a year. Without daily reminders and habits, it’s easy for these tasks to get lost in the hurry of day-to-day living.

Here’s a list of these infrequent organizing tasks to help your 2014 get off to an organized start:

• Re-organize Your Office: whether you commute to a cubicle or work in a niche under your staircase, your office space makes a big difference in your productivity. Take stock of how you file documents, the state of your work surfaces, and your storage situation for paper and office accessories. If you’ve been working around a cluttered desk, try some new organizers and give yourself some breathing room.
• Go Through Your Files: unless you work for an insurance company or an auditing firm, understanding which documents to keep can be a little confusing. But keeping everything that comes through your mailbox makes it impossible to find what you need.
  The IRS.gov website has a helpful checklist to help you sort your documents and remove the ones you no longer need. And once you have your active files ready, you can make your file storage work as so much more with the Scoot Mobile File and Work Surface.
• Clear Off Your Computer Desktop: Are you having trouble seeing your desktop background through all the file icons? Taking an evening to sort through your documents, photos, and email can help you free up space on your machine and make it easier to find the files you’re looking for. Start with a 2013 folder, and then subdivide it into categories like pictures, work documents, etc. Open the 2013 folder and another file browser window, then drag and drop directly from one to the other, deleting unwanted files along the way.