You may have heard of something called ‘döstädning’, a trend that has reached the world at large, originating in Sweden: ‘Swedish Death Cleaning’ is the term that is commonly used to refer to this phenomenon in fancy magazines and amongst professional organisers and declutterers.

I don’t think this is the catchiest name anyone could have come up with, but let’s stick with it for now…

Decluttering often comes across as a disruptive process. It usually involves moving many items large and small around, a certain amount of cleaning (sometimes a large amount of cleaning, if we are being honest with ourselves) and a lot of decisions have to be taken on a myriad of subjects.

It seems obvious that these activities take a bit of time and determination, and then someone drops the big question: “Is there not a better way to do this?”

If you are running your own business and times are good, you might find yourself employing people to work for you, or to outsource certain tasks to subcontractors. Either way, you have taken a step forward by deciding that some elements of your business are better served being done by someone else, rather than bogging down the boss of it all.

But are you sure you are doing the right thing?

Anyone who has ever worked in an office – be it as an employee, as a self-employed agent, or in your home office – has come across the issue of filing papers. Yes, it’s that old chestnut again, and for good reason: there are a couple of basic concepts to filing that a lot of people don’t seem to get their mind around.

Of course, some of these seven mistakes apply more to the physical paper files, and others more to electronic ones. Still, the underlying strategies give valuable insight into the why and how of filing...

While home offices require a bit of focus to work well in terms of separation from the home life that happens just the width of a wall away, they also tend to have different requirements on their arrangement of physical components to make them as efficient and agreeable as possible. Once you have managed to separate yourself mentally from your home and entered the physical and mental space of your office, you want it to be as straightforward and non-disruptive as possible.

What is involved? What do you need to consider?

After looking at those strange ways office layouts can affect the way you work – or are kept from working – efficiently, why not read about some ways to make offices more efficient simply by using the right kind of furniture in the right configuration. Obviously, a large, single occupation, corner office has much less of an organisation issue than a multiple occupation situation, so most of this article will be about offices where at least two people are sharing the space.