Administrative clutter (part 2): clearing the backlog

In part 1 I have talked about the need to find out what it is you actually have to keep, and while this is an important part of decluttering an office space, another part is to make sure the space is as clear of clutter as possible. Starting to do this can be daunting, especially if things have been left to fester for a while.

As always, you need to distinguish the necessary from the useless. Start by making sure you have a lot of space on the floor and a pad of sticky notes handy for labels if things get too complex to remember.

The “actionable” pile.

• Take the topmost document/paper.
• Is this junk? If YES: put on the “recycle” pile.
• Does this paper belong in my office? If NO, put on the “move” pile.
• Do I have to take action on this? If YES: put on the “to do” pile.
• Are you required to keep it? If YES: put it on the “keep” pile.
• Do you want to keep it? If YES: put it on the “want” pile.
• Anything else: put on the “recycle” pile.
• Repeat.

Once you have dealt with your original pile (or maybe several of them), turn to your four new piles and deal with them separately.

The “keep” pile.

Those things should be filed in a way that allow for easy retrieval.

• Take the topmost document/paper.
• Do you have a file with similar documents? (e.g. if this is a phone bill, do you have a place for previous phone bills.) If YES: put on the “file” pile.
• Is this a new kind of document that will appear in your IN-box regularly? If YES: put on the “new” pile.
• Is this a one-off document? If YES: put on the “one-off” pile.
• Repeat.

Once this is done, leave these three piles alone for a moment and move on.

The “want” pile.

Usually, this pile is relatively small, because it serves as a safety system to avoid papers slipping through the net. Ask yourself: why do you want to hold on to this even though it did not end up in the “keep” pile? If you can come up with a good reason (and that could be “I like the image on this postcard” or “for research purposes”), by all means keep them.

However, make sure you don’t start to create a hidden collection somewhere that you never refer to: make sure to display the beautiful image somewhere, and to create a proper ‘research’ folder for the latter. If they end up in some drawer somewhere, you might as well throw them out right now!

The “move” pile.

At this point, you might need some physical exercise to clear your mind. This pile contains items that you have decided are not in the right place. Usually, however, this part is fairly straightforward: you have identified these things as NOT part of the office, which implies you have a better place for them in mind. Why not pick up some or all of the move pile – depending on how big a pile it is – and relocate those items to their proper place.

And by ‘proper place’ I don’t mean dumping them somewhere else. These things need a proper home where they belong. If you can’t find one, you may want to reconsider why you want to keep them in the first place! The “recycle” pile is right in front of you and you are free to add more to it.

The “recycle” pile.

NOW it’s time to take all that paper out to your usual recycle spot. That could be your recycling bin, a box that you use for paper and take away regularly, … whichever system you use. If you have no such system, consider paper recycling: it is a simple yet effective thing to do and requires very little change in your life. Just separate as you go along during your days and you’ll realise just how much paper rubbish you produce. It’s a good eye-opener, believe me.

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At this point, you should be left with only things you need to actually take care of: either actionable items (the “to do” pile) or things to be filed (the “file”, “new” and “one-off” piles), plus potentially more papers that you have not yet sorted through, still sitting on your desk.

I suggest to repeat the sorting until nothing is left but those four categories, as this will vastly speed up your filing process. And we’ll look at simple ways to do that in part 3.

If you have enjoyed reading this, you may find these other articles interesting:

• Administrative clutter (part 3): filing strategies
  
• Discarding ballast
  
• Email correspondence: leading by example