Quarterly Office Cleaning: Make Your Office More Comfortable and Efficient

Some days it feels like winter has just begun, but spring will be here before you know it. Now is the perfect time to schedule a day to clean your office - and to set up a quarterly cleaning routine.

Certain things often get overlooked in office cleaning; some are not generally preformed by cleaning crews. When these 'cleaning' tasks are considered, they are usually low-priority, and can get put off indefinitely. Adding these items to your to-do list once a month will keep your office in great shape. If that seems like too much for your schedule, aim for at least once a quarter.

Quarterly Office Cleaning: Files

If your office is like most, you probably have a good deal of your space - desk space, filing cabinets, overhead space - devoted to storing papers and files. No matter how neatly you keep your files, they do still need occasional 'cleaning'.

Everyday you get more papers through your office, and some are bound to accumulate. Perhaps you have even had to add more file storage to your office already. If you clean your files at least once a quarter, you will find yourself with more space, and probably also better organization.

Take five minutes to scan through the drawer you open least often. How many times did you say, "Wow, I didn't realize I still had that"? Your office should not be a treasure hunt, and a quick cleaning each quarter can stop that.

Are you ready to clean out your files? Completed projects can be removed to long-term storage. Be sure to label them well, and include a destroy date if applicable, to make it easy to keep your long term storage clean also.

Start your cleaning with an empty trash can because some items simply don't need to be retained. For those papers that aren't going anywhere, keep an eye toward consolidation. Do you really need all the duplicates? Can you combine all of your notes onto one or two sheets in a set location to clean things up? Is it really necessary to have, for example a phone number, kept in three places?

Quarterly Office Cleaning: Computer

It is very important to clean your computer regularly, and I don't just mean that you should dust it. Computers attract their own sort of clutter, filling up with every bit of work you've ever done. Going through your hard drive could be another treasure hunt, and that's still not a good thing.

Virus and spy-ware scans should be done at least weekly; daily is better if you go online. Even if you are already keeping your computer clean in that way, it could probably still use a thorough cleaning quarterly.

Go through your folders, one by one (Windows Explorer is an easy place to do this for PC users). Are there things in there that don't need to be retained? If so delete them, and you'll free up some memory. Old projects might be able to be stored off the computer. If so, print them out and clean up some more of your hard drive.

While you're cleaning your hard drive, see if you can be more organized. Create new folders for projects, and move related files into them. Clean up your computer a little and you'll find more memory (which will help it run faster) and easier-to-find files.

Quarterly Office Cleaning: Surface Areas

Naturally, the surface areas in your office are clean - or, at least, they look clean. If your cleaning crew is doing it, they are probably just wiping open areas. Dust, allergens, etc., can accumulate under your keyboard, behind your monitor, and pretty much every where else that doesn't get a frequent cleaning. Cleaning these areas quarterly can make your office much more pleasant.

While you have the cleaning supplies out, it's a good idea to clean out the insides of drawers and wipe down the inside of your file cabinets and your overheads. Dust, dirt and scraps of paper have a way of building up in those places.

If you really want to be sure that your office is in good shape, finish up with a quick "touch clean". Go around your office and try to think of everything you touch. Go through the motions of some of your daily activities. Visualize your co-workers' behavior; are there certain places they lean? Clean all of these areas and any others that seem to be high traffic.

Trying to schedule a whole day free for cleaning can also be a daunting task. There is no reason why you can't break it up. Set each task to its own day, and switch back to regular work after that day's cleaning is complete. You don't even need to do all the tasks in a single week if you are too busy.

If you make an effort to fit these quarterly office cleaning tasks into your schedule at least once a quarter, you are likely to see a cleaner, more organized and more efficient office. However you find yourself best able to fit them into your schedule, remember to actually put the tasks on your daily schedule. Not only will you not forget, you will be more likely to have time to get them done