Keeping your Apartment Clean: 5 Tips to Keep Your Desktop Organized

Keeping your apartment clean can be a challenge when you live a hectic lifestyle, especially if you have a tendency to toss things on your desk. However, if you want a usable desktop instead of a mass of clutter, just follow these tips for keeping your desktop organized:

1 – File Documents As You Receive Them

One of the most common pieces of clutter atop a typical desktop are documents: bills, letters, papers from work, bank and credit card statements, receipts, junk mail, etc. Even if you intend to keep your apartment clean, it can be too easy to toss all important documents on your desk, thinking you’ll deal with them later. However, over time, this mass of documents turns into a large pile that makes the desk unusable.

Take the time and effort-just a few minutes a day-to organize documents as you receive them. Shred or cut up junk mail and documents you no longer need. The rest should be placed in clearly-labeled file folders, which you can then organize in your desk drawer or in a filing cabinet or storage box.

2 – Use the Inbox/Outbox System

Transfer the stereotypical office inbox/outbox filing shelf system to your own home desktop. When bills and letters are ready to be mailed, place them in the outbox so that you can easily grab them on your way to the post office. If you really don’t have time to file new mail, place them in your inbox, but be sure to organize them later that day.

3 – Get Drawer Organizers

Other common culprits that stop you from keeping your apartment clean include loose pencils, pens, paperclips, rubber bands, push pins and other small common office items. Stop losing these items around your apartment and don’t just toss them anywhere on top of your desktop, as that will make it cluttered in no time. Instead, purchase drawer organizers and keep most of these items stored in organized bins inside one of your desk drawers.

4 – Use Only One Pen Holder

Most people have more pencils and pens than they need, particularly those who can’t keep an apartment clean and wind up losing them all over the apartment. However, as you’re cleaning up your desktop, ignore the urge to keep them all within easy reach atop the desk or you’ll wind up with three or four pen holders that just take up extra space. Instead, place only one pen holder on the table with a few pens and pencils and store the rest in a desk drawer.

5 – Use a Planner, Not Post-Its

Post-It Notes seem convenient, but they’re easy to lose and hard to keep organized. A memo to remind yourself to pay a bill is too important to lose. If you see the memo a few days later, you may not even remember what it’s referencing. Write all important notes to yourself in a planner instead.

An organized desktop is one step to keeping your apartment clean and makes your desk a functional piece of furniture instead of just a waste of space. With an organized desktop, you can use a laptop, study, read books, write letters, do your bills and everything else in one simple, functional space.