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Written by The McCarthy's Team on October 4, 2018

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October 4^th 2018 marks Improve Your Office Day – and whilst some might say these ‘days’ are getting a bit over the top, we actually get on board with the concept behind this one. Ok, dedicating a day to it might be a bit much, but if it does encourage you to take action to get things ship shape then that’s definitely a good thing.

As my old teacher used to say – a tidy desk is a tidy mind. And whilst I probably rolled my eyes at the time, I can now see they had a point. Clutter everywhere makes it hard to focus and easy to feel overwhelmed. And that’s not even to get started on the GDPR risk of not knowing where everything is…

So, whether you’re a homeworker with an office in the spare room, or you share an office of any size with others, what easy steps can you take to make it a nicer, and hopefully more productive, environment?

• Paper, paper everywhere – bragging about going paperless was very trendy for a while, but for many organisations it’s not always practical. Make sure you have filing boxes and trays for specific purposes and to help you keep track of where everything is, and never leave the office without tidying away papers into their rightful places. If paperwork has customer or employee details on it you need to take particular care from a GDPR viewpoint. Once you’re finished with it, make sure it gets shredded. Rather than relying on a home shredder, which can be a long and arduous job, why not consider a shredding service like McCarthy’s Safe Shred? We can set up locked consoles in your office for waste paper and come and empty them as needed – either shredding them on site in our mobile shredding unit or taking them to our secure shredding facility. All the waste paper and confidential material is entirely destroyed and sent off to be recycled in the UK – double bonus.

If you’re a home-based entrepreneur, we also have a personal shredding service – we can provide you with a sack which you return to us once full, and we safely shred it for you.

• The files are taking over – some types of business require a lot of paperwork – and it may legally need to be kept for several years. Don’t let filing cabinets and document boxes take over your workspace. McCarthy’s offers a document management and archiving service, whereby we look after your important files for you. Using a clever barcode system you can quickly gain access to your files as needed, but the rest of the time you can just forget about them. We can even set an automatic ‘sell by date’ equivalent – getting rid of them safely via our secure shredding service – once they’re not needed any more. One less thing for you to worry about!
• Can’t see the wood for the trees – sometimes there’s just too much stuff. Stock, which may ebb and flow in line with seasonal demand, tools which might not be needed day-in and day-out, excess office furniture you need to keep for now – things you want to keep, but where can it all go? This is when Self storage is your friend. Units at McCarthy’s start from just £6 a week and can ensure you have somewhere safe, clean and dry to store your items. You hold the only key to the unit, which can be accessed whenever you need it. There’s lifts and trolleys to help you move things from your vehicle to your unit, and ample car parking at all of our Leeds, Harrogate and Wakefield

So why not clear up your office space – today might be just the day to do it!