How I saved hundreds by cleaning my office

As a result of a recent massive office cleanup I have saved hundreds of dollars by freeing up space and uncovering a forgotten treasure trove of office supplies.

When I started working from home as a writer almost seven years ago, I took a chunk of my retirement savings and bought a u-shaped desk with upper cabinets, a book shelf/filing unit and an ergonomic desk chair.

However, it didn’t take long for my generous working space to shrink, as the piles of paper grew  and my filing cabinet overflowed. Since I started working for Moneyville early this year, the mess went from bad to worse.  

Because I write three times a week I am constantly looking for ideas.  I clip hard copies of newspaper articles, plus I print articles and other reference material on a daily basis. I have disciplined myself to put research materials for each completed blog in a labelled folder and file the folders every week, but 120 blogs later, I’ve run out of filing space. And my corporate client files seemed to reside permanently on my desk.

I thought about buying another filing cabinet, but in order to fit one into my office, I’d have to get rid of the comfy couch, which didn’t seem like a great trade off. It would also cost me at least $200. So my only other option was to come up with a strategy for identifying and recycling unnecessary material.

I decided that in any case where I could get research material again from the internet, there was no good reason to retain the file. Nevertheless, I was very careful to put contact information for valuable sources into my Outlook address book along with a handful of key words in the notes, so hopefully I can find the relevant person the next time I do a related story. Everything on my computer is backed up daily to “a cloud” provider.

With some regret, I also dumped back issues of trade magazines, old association directories and other miscellaneous stuff from one of the upper cabinets, thus freeing up enough space to store the client files that were cluttering up my desk. The best part of this exercise was that behind my “periodical archives” I found boxes of pens, labels, sticky notes, tape and other supplies I didn’t know I had.

What I didn’t find was the nifty new digital recorder I bought a few months ago which appears to have disappeared into cyberspace. Fortunately, my trusty older model is still working fine.

I’m still looking for the lost recorder, but if it doesn’t turn up soon, maybe I can justify replacing it with the money I saved as a result of my Thanksgiving weekend clean up. After all, now I don’t need to buy a filing cabinet, and it looks like I won’t need anymore office supplies for the foreseeable future.

Also read: 11 money saving winterizing things to do now  and 4 easy ways to save $25 a week.