If your workplace feels busier than ever but not necessarily more productive, clutter might be the culprit. From overflowing supply closets and paper piles to chaotic shared drives and break rooms, disorganization quietly eats away at time, focus, and profit every single day. Studies estimate that the average employee spends an hour each day looking for items, information, and coworkers. When you multiply that lost time and productivity across your entire team, your workplace clutter problem is more than just an inconvenience!
Why Clutter Piles Up in Businesses
Clutter doesn’t usually appear overnight; it sneaks in slowly, one empty binder and 20-year-old plaque at a time. Then, one day, the supply closet is bursting at the seams, and the shared drive has 15 copies of the same presentation. Here are a few of the biggest culprits for office clutter:
- The ownership gap - That pile of cords, those stacks of old files, the random office chair with one wobbly wheel—they don’t belong to anyone, so no one feels like they have the authority to get rid of them.
- Turnover trouble - When people move on, change roles, or switch to a remote site, their stuff often stays behind. Old binders, equipment, and even personal items can linger for years, quietly taking up valuable space and hiding what you are actually looking for.
- Just-in-case thinking - Many items are kept past their prime on the very slight chance that they might be useful someday. That’s why so many companies have closets and cabinets filled with outdated manuals, old technology, broken equipment, and paper files that have already been digitized.
- Dumping grounds - Breakrooms, supply closets, and empty offices have an almost magnetic pull that draws in office clutter. Need to stash a box of swag for a conference? Don’t know what that charger is for? Did someone move offices and leave a mountain of items behind? Suddenly, your shared spaces are doing more storing than serving your team.
- Fear of tossing - No one wants to be the one who accidentally throws away something important, so everything stays. That’s why shared drives end up with endless duplicate files and break rooms have an assortment of chipped, stained, and never-used mugs. The risk of tossing the wrong thing can feel scarier than just letting everything stick around.
The result is a slow build-up of clutter that eats away at time, space, and sanity until your clutter starts running the show!
Clutter Hurts Wellbeing and the Bottom Line
Clutter doesn’t just crowd your workspace; it drains your team’s energy, focus, and productivity. Every messy supply closet, overstuffed file cabinet, and chaotic shared drive has a hidden cost.
Think about how much time your employees spend searching for things each week: someone hunting for printer paper or the “good scissors,” another trying to remember where the extra batteries are kept, or a manager scrolling through old emails to find the latest version of a document. Each minor delay feels harmless, but they add up to hours of lost focus each day, and that’s time your team could be using to serve clients, collaborate, or innovate.
In addition to losing time and productivity, office clutter often results in wasted money. When no one can find what they need, they often end up ordering duplicates of items the company already owns. Our favorite story is the office that purchased three separate label-makers in various attempts to get organized over the years, but couldn’t find any of them until they brought in the professionals!
Clutter quietly chips away at morale and focus. Neuroscientists at Princeton showed that messy environments increase stress and cognitive overload and noted that when people “cleared clutter from their work environment, they were better able to focus and process information, and their productivity increased.” When every surface, drawer, and shared folder feels chaotic, it’s harder to concentrate, make decisions, and feel calm at work. It also sends the message to employees that disorganization is normal and that the details aren’t important.
The clutter in your workplace doesn’t just affect the people inside your organization; it affects how others see you. When clients, partners, or investors walk into a disorganized reception area or a new hire finds their desk piled with someone else’s folders on their first day, it undermines confidence in your company’s professionalism before anyone says a word.
Advice for Getting Started
Trying to tackle every disorganized space at once can be overwhelming, so here are a few tips to get you started:
- Organize a Free Sale: Ask everyone in your office to sort through their workspaces and look for things they no longer need but that might be useful for someone else: Extra staplers, folders, cords, travel mugs, office decor, dry-erase markers, etc. Arrange a location and time for everyone to drop off their excess and then encourage your employees to shop for items they need in their office or home. The remainder can be organized and then either stored or donated.
- Use our Power Purge: Our process has been tested in thousands of homes and offices around the country. Gather a small team of motivated workers, order some coffee and bagels, and put the Power Purge to work!
- Tackle one zone at a time: Focus your energy on one supply closet, shared drive, or breakroom at a time. Succeeding at bite-sized projects creates momentum that can lead to real, sustainable change.
- Label and contain: Clear bins and labels are our most powerful weapon when it comes to fighting chaos. For organizational systems to work, everyone who might need the item needs to be able to quickly see where and how it is stored.
- Set limits: As you are making your way through the clutter, keep track of the types of items that tend to pile up. Establish retention policies for files, unused equipment, and supplies so that everyone has permission to clear out items once they've been kept for the agreed-upon time.
- Partner with experts: Sometimes, the smartest move is bringing in an expert with an outside perspective. Your team is busy and you hired them for their specific areas of expertise not their organizing prowess! The Bees can quickly get to work helping you sort and remove items you no longer need, and then build new organizing systems that will work for your entire team.
- Consider assigning ownership: If possible, designate a person or team to be responsible for maintaining shared spaces once they are organized. If that’s not possible, it might make the most sense to plan on an annual maintenance visit from the Bees.
All Workspaces Need Attention
It’s not just supply closets, reception desks, and break rooms that need the occasional TLC. Over the years, we’ve organized artist studios, restaurant kitchens and pantries, hair salons, lifeguard shacks, and more. Every workspace, no matter how unique, functions better when it’s organized.
Even remote employees can benefit. The National Association of Productivity and Organizing (NAPO) suggests that employers support home office organization to boost productivity and reduce stress. Whether it’s at work, at home, or somewhere in between, clear spaces create clear minds!
The bottom line is that a cluttered workspace slows everyone down. When your office is organized, productivity soars, morale improves, and your employees can focus on the work you hired them to do. If your business feels more like a storage unit than a productivity hub, it might be time to call in the Bees!
