Learn What to Throw Away During Your Office Move

As you gear up for that big – and always potentially stressful – office move: here’s a tip from your NYC professional organizer to take seriously: the less you actually move, the better it is going to go.

The more you see your move like Sisyphus pushing a rock up a hill, or even Atlas carrying the heavens on his shoulders, the more you are likely to emulate their downfalls.

Don’t choose heroic levels of stress. Instead: start throwing things away – or donating more gently used items – and start doing it now.

Where are the things you should throw away or donate? They’re probably either fully, or partly, hidden from view:

The junk drawer: every home has one, and, unfortunately, nearly every office has one (or more), too. This is where surprising quantities of unneeded and distracting pieces of paper, old packaging, useless “gifts,” and conference giveaways have accumulated, over time. These are definitely non-essentials to your office move. To make quick work of this task, set a timer and make 3 piles from the items in each junk drawer….keep, toss, and donate. Hint: your keep pile should be the smallest – there’s a reason they call it the junk drawer! Once everything has been sorted, pack/toss them accordingly and then move on to the next area.

The supply closet: This may be where a few vital supplies that you and your office mates actually use are found.  It may also be where the 7 toner cartridges for the printer you got rid of in 2008 are sitting in their boxes and random stacks of brochures from 4 business cycles ago have taken up residence.  Again: set the timer and throw out or recycle what is not absolutely necessary and regularly used. Do it now!

The storage room: As a NYC professional organizer, I can say that this one is a biggie!  If your office is like many that I have seen, this is the place where all those items that you didn’t know where to put or what to do with land up.  An unused desktop computer that froze in 2002 sits on the floor; files that everyone agreed could be warehoused or shredded in 2010 continue to gather dust; the island of broken furniture, ugly furniture takes up valuable space.  Sound familiar?

Here you are going to need to separate the good from the bad and the ugly. If need be, put a piece of duct tape temporarily across the floor: What’s staying is on one side, and what’s finally being discarded on the other.

Having addressed these areas, and truly purged everything that you can, you’re going to have a much more productive and cost efficient office move. As a NYC Professional Organizer, I’ve seen many, many successful moves, ones that were positive experiences for all involved. One thing they had in common: They had gotten rid of all of the unnecessary items cluttering up their space well before moving day.