Your Spring Cleaning Tips and Hacks

Taking care of your home office is becoming as essential as cleaning the bedroom like we did in Week 4. 

Remote work and the growing dependency of computers is making our home office’s more vital to our personal and professional lives than ever. Neglecting the home office can result in poor work or school performance and an overall cluttered mind since we spend so much time using this area of the home. 

This week we will deep dive into taking care of the home office and get you ready for another productive year. 

Start with a Wipe Down

Much like in previous weeks, the best place to start is with a simple, but thorough wipe down of the entire office. You can use any professional cleaning wipes of your choice or just a wet cleaning rag to wipe down all of your office furniture, working, and non-working surfaces. 

It’s easy for us to forget to do a simple task like wiping down throughout the year because we’re so busy. The last thing you want to do after a long day of working is to clean, causing dust and other filth to slowly, but steadily pile up. 

Spring Cleaning Hack: When dusting, you’ll naturally move items out of the way, be sure to start placing these items into separate piles to later sort through during your decluttering. In addition to collecting dust, it’s common for piles of papers to build throughout the year. We tell ourselves that we’ll get to them later only for later to come and the pile keeps getting taller. 

The Computer

After the office furniture, working, and non-working surfaces are done, it’s time to move onto the computer. This is a step that everyone must do, but may be limited depending on technical knowledge. 

For those who are tech savvy, part of the spring cleaning wipe down includes wiping, or dusting, your computer inside and out. The more dust that builds up inside our computer can cause it to slow down in performance or even worse overheat. 

Computers need plenty of airflow to stay cool, and avoid overheating, but dust tends to collect in and around the computer naturally. The fans inside the computer do an excellent job at cooling a non-dusty computer, but may struggle to keep up as the dust cakes on. 

If you’re not tech savvy enough to open the computer and carefully dust out the inside, then it’s advisable to bring it to a certified computer technical support specialist who can tune it up for you. It’s important that you get this done, because we consider computer maintenance and cleaning an essential part of the spring cleaning guide since we rely on them for everyday life, especially remote workers and students. 

Spring Cleaning Hack: If you intend on taking your computer to a technical support professional, do this first before beginning to wipe down the rest of the office. This will save time and ensure your cleaning workflow is seamless. 

The Computer Chair

Next we will address the computer chair, because it’s another thing in the office that goes unnoticed until it’s time for a new one. During your spring cleaning inspect the chair’s condition to see if it needs to be refabricated or potentially replaced. 

A good office chair can still be costly even for the lower price range, so taking the extra time to care for the chair will pay off in the long run. Check the seams for any ruptures or early signs of wear and ensure the levers are properly functioning how you need them. 

Finally, the cushion is likely to go out before the rest of the chair from prolonged use. If the cushion is bad but the rest of the chair is fine, see if refilling it is viable, otherwise you could search for alternative solutions like separate cushions that go over the top of the current cushion, instead of replacing the whole chair. 

Spring Cleaning Tip: Use spring cleaning to consider your office’s ergonomics. How can you improve them for a more comfortable and productive environment? Spring cleaning is also about reflection from the prior year to evaluate what’s working and what can be improved. Marginal changes can add up to major wins in the long run. 

Organizing the Office

After the office is wiped down, it’s time to start organizing everything to provide a healthier work and study environment. 

Earlier you should’ve started sorting piles of your files, electronics, and other items that you were moving out of the way during the wipe down. Now is the time to start sorting through these piles and determining what needs to go, stay, or be stored. Additionally, if you have a filing cabinet or other organization systems in your office then it’s time to pull everything out and sort through them too. 

It’s best to place old files like tax forms, receipts, and other important documents you intend on keeping in a filing box. You might find that the filing boxes pile up fast and you don’t have more room to store the boxes at home. A great solution for storing your filing boxes is in a storage unit that way you can keep and safeguard these important documents without them taking up space in your daily organization set up. 

For the documents you don’t intend on keeping, it’s always a great idea to shred them if they have potentially sensitive information on them and then recycle. 

Spring Cleaning Hack: A 5×5 storage unit is the ideal way to store your business records and other office items that you gather throughout your office spring cleaning spree. The Spring is also a great time to take advantage of promotions that offer the best deals on a storage unit! 

Electronics

An interesting aspect about technology is its ever-changing, constantly evolving into better versions of its prior self and easily solving problems we encounter daily. However, the downside is we tend to collect electronics throughout the year that quickly become obsolete and eventually used best as our next paper weight. 

During your spring cleaning, collect all of your old electronics and decide if you want to keep them, donate, recycle, throw away, or store them later. 

Many people like to securely store their electronics, especially if they hold a certain sentimental or financial value. Old cameras are a great relic of the past to see how far photography has changed or to be in future projects, but they’re not something we use everyday. 

Much like old documents, storing electronics in a storage unit is a great way to help keep their integrity, so they can be used later without taking up space in your current office. 

Spring Cleaning Tip: Depending on the type of device and condition, some electronics hold their value due to their nostalgia and market demand. Research all of your old devices to see if you’re hanging onto any golden nuggets that you don’t need anymore and walk away with a clean office and some money in your wallet. 

Declutter Your Digital Office

Did you know your home office spring cleaning goes beyond the physical realm? Since so much of our life and work is done on the computer, it’s just as important to clean up your digital environment as it is cleaning the physical. 

No matter if you’re an orderly person or one who thrives in disorganization, everyone can benefit from taking a few moments to clean up their computer’s filing system. This is also a time to reorder the filing system to create more cohesive workflows and even take inventory of your subscription list. 

We tend to subscribe to more apps and services than we unsubscribe too,  however, we don’t use all of them. Part of your digital clean up can include unsubscribing to these unused apps and services and also help save money– spring cleaning has so many perks! 

Now that you’ve cleaned your physical and digital office, you can successfully check Week 5 off your list of spring cleaning to-do’s! We’re officially over halfway through your spring cleaning and hopefully you’re noticing a significant difference throughout your home. 

Next week we will be doing our favorite– digging through storage spaces around the home!