| If your idea of creating office storage is frantically tossing everything into any available drawer or cabinet to make room for your clients to sit down, it’s time to start thinking seriously about office storage.
As a professional organizer, I’ve heard all the complaints.
“I don’t have enough space,” they say, when actually they DO have enough space, but too much unnecessary stuff filling every corner of that space.
“I don’t have enough time to deal with all of these papers!” they bemoan, when actually the piles are costing them time, as well as money.
“Office storage is boring,” they intone. Well, there, they’ve got me. I can't expect everyone to get the same frisson of excitement I get.
It’s hard to get excited about office storage, right? After all, isn’t storage about getting things out of sight? Not so fast! Actually, storage is about putting things away now so that you can find exactly what you’re looking for later. Over the next few weeks, I'm going to focus on three main types of office storage—supplies, papers and reference material—and the best methods for ensuring painless retrieval and increased office productivity.
Before deciding what should go into storage and where it should be stored, you need to ask (and answer) three questions about every single item in your office:
1. Why is it being kept?
When setting up a storage system, it’s essential to purge unnecessary items. The key to identifying what is truly necessary is knowing why you have it in the first place.
The operational, financial or legal reasons for retaining some records or supplies may be obvious; they may even be dictated by your company or franchise policy or government regulation. However, uncertainty is often the driving force behind holding onto unnecessary or outdated items.
If you aren’t sure why a document or file is being kept, ask yourself (or your attorney, accountant or professional organizer) under what circumstances might it be needed in the future?
If your answer to “Why is it being kept?” was a shrug of your shoulders and a sheepish “Just in case,” indicating you lack a clear notion of in case of what, there’s a strong likelihood that the item does not need to be stored at all, but sent elsewhere (to a colleague, client or vendor, to archival storage, etc.), shredded or discarded.
If you're saving a huge, old Rolodex® with all the cards from the job you had 15 years ago, take a moment to remember how the cards all fell out when you turned past the F's. Outmoded resources, like outdated documents, don't belong in your prime real estate.
2. Who needs to access this item?
If you are working on your own in a home office, you only need to satisfy yourself regarding the convenience of your storage system. (This assumes you aren't trying to store your work items on top of your toddler's toys or your spouse's hobby paraphernalia.)
However, if you are planning storage for a communal office environment, whether for 2 or 202, you might unwittingly find yourself in the middle of territorial disputes. In other words, “In Officeland, she who has the prettiest Post-It® pads rules, and woe onto he who purloins the Queen’s stash!”
Even if your business amounts to you, yourself and your evil twin, your successful (and successfully organized) business will grow over time, and eventually you could have a much larger staff, so you'll need to take these perceived slights seriously. If access to stored items becomes a political issue, you can smooth things over by selecting a neutral storage location that neither impinges upon the space of one person or group, nor grants anyone easier access than is afforded to others.
Further, for those of you who still have one foot in the corporate world, when departments have individual supply budgets, it may warrant setting up mini-storage cabinets within each department. This might mean rearranging office furnishings or designating a Supply Chief to ensure equitable distribution. The extra effort will be rewarded with fewer office squabbles between Marketing and Sales and a work environment more conducive to efficiency than misery. Even if your company is just you and your occasionally-useful significant other, if you want your supporters to gleefully support you, you need to make sure they can access what they need, when they need it.
As a corollary to who needs access, consider who should not have access to certain stored items. Personnel and other confidential records, proprietary procedural documentation and other sensitive data should be stored in a location with controlled access, whether by key, combination lock or computer password. For home offices, where corporate espionage is less often a concern than a toddler’s sticky jam hands, a lockable filing cabinet or fire-proof safe should suffice.
3. How often will it be retrieved?
In general, the frequency of access is inversely proportional to distance between you and your storage.
If archived files will only be retrieved in case of a year-end audit or an unlikely re-opening of a closed account, storage may be far from the essential activities in the office, such as a back room or off-site storage building, provided the location is safe and environmentally controlled. Conversely, office supplies or current client records should be located so that retrieval requires as little time and effort as possible.
Once you know the purpose for which an item is being kept, who needs access to it and how often, it’s much easier to determine, the actual location and method for storage becomes much easier to determine. (Here's a preview: not all files belong on your desk, and you really don't need to keep all the pens, tape flags and Post-Its® in your top drawer. Seriously.)
Over the next two weeks, we'll get to the heart of the storage situation: office supplies, reference materials and working files. For now, take a look around your office and start asking yourself the three questions (above) to get you started.
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Julie Bestry, Certified Professional Organizer®
Best Results Organizing
"Don't apologize. Organize!"
organize@juliebestry.com
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