Planning your marketing strategy, conducting showings, attending networking meetings, negotiating offers, holding open houses, drawing up paperwork… is it any wonder that, with everything on your plate, cleaning your office isn’t at the top of your priority list?

Unfortunately, a messy office space can lead to a messy workflow – and an overwhelming, unorganized load of stress every time you try to start a new project. Fortunately, though, there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Organizing your office doesn’t have to be a huge hassle, with these tips to get you started:

• DO declutter. How much stuff do you have laying around – old marketing materials, out-of-date business cards, dried up ink pens – that is just taking up space and adding to the clutter? Time to do a purge. There’s no feeling as great as getting all that stuff out of your office and into the trash can!
• DON’T let filing build up. It’s easy to look at a stack of papers that you know needs to be organized and put away and think, “oh, I’ll get to it later”. But before you know it, the stack is towering over your desk and in danger of collapse. Instead, implement a 10-minute “filing frenzy” each day. You don’t need to spend more than ten minutes (set a timer!), but you do need to file and organize the whole time.
• DO set up work zones. Plan for areas in your office space where you do a lot of a particular kind of work, and make sure you have the supplies you need close at hand. If you do a lot of mailing, get a space set up with all your stamps, real estate postcards, folded notecards, custom stationery, and personalized return address labels. When you need to do your next mailing, everything you need will be right at hand.
• DON’T leave things to the last minute. Anything you can prep ahead of time will make your life easier during a crunch – and keep your office more streamlined, to boot. Get a stack of presentation folders and fill them with all the information you usually hand out at a listing meeting. Put a sticky note on the front so you know what you need to add to personalize the folders for a meeting, and you’ll be able to simply the process for every future meeting.