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How to combat office clutter

MESSY No, it doesn’t have to be this way! (Flickr/Creative Commons photo)
One small company that literally saved my life every year at the Business Report was Boulder’s Officiency Inc., run by the the organizing superwoman K.J. McCorry.

Officiency is a company that helps your business increase your productivity and efficiency by not only helping you clean yourself out of the stacks of paper, useless files and whatever else you’re clogging up your work environment with, but K.J. will help you set up simple and effective systems to actually keep you organized.

Now I confess, I have this problem of thinking nearly every piece of paper, including newspaper and magazine articles, that crosses my desk is of the utmost importance — and that one day I surely will need it. With K.J.’s help at the end of each year, at least I had very handy desktop files to move things I wanted to read later, and eventually be reminded that it should “not” move into the filing cabinet where I would never see it again.

K.J. McCorry of Officiency

At the end of each year, my business partner and I would call in K.J., and she’d roll the huge recycling bin directly into our offices and start the process of tossing out paper, old newspapers and files that held materials dating back several years. K.J. also can help you organized your online files, including e-mail, since those gets as packed these days as paper files.

Officiency now has a line of online reports available for purchase including: Become an Effective Email Manager, Using Time Management Tools Effectively and Getting Tasks Done. There’s also some free reports, including How to Organize Your Computer Documents and online chapters from K.J.’s book, “Organize Your Work Day In No Time.”

Several new reports are planned for 2010.

I was thinking of K.J. because these days I’m working from my home office, having sold our ownership in the Business Report. And with a burst of end-of-year energy, I’ve begun attacking my home office, spending nearly two days just shredding old bank and financial statements, as well as digging through files I’ve been saving for years. K.J. would be proud.

You can read K.J.’s reports, but if you really want to catch the Office Cleanup Spirit, I highly recommend giving K.J. a call and hiring her to help you dig out. Yes, it can be a bit painful at first … it might take a half or even full day out of your workweek if your office was as cluttered as mine. But I promise you it will feel so much better when it’s all done, and you once again see the top of your desk.

(This article also appeared in Jerry Lewis’s blog, Boulder Report.)

Jerry Lewis: Editor, columnist, blogger and photographer in Boulder, Colorado. Former editor/publisher of Boulder County Business Report; Colorado journalist for more than 35 years.