How to free off those crammed spaces

In our day to day activities, we are oftenly caught up in messy and congested spaces. Whether in our offices, our homes, corridors or even in our car booths. It is important to realize that, from the onset, these spaces are meant to always remain neat, organized and capable of facilitating our daily tasks as per their capacities. But as a result of these daily activities, it comes to a point that our spaces become so crammed that they can no longer facilitate any reasonable movement; Piled up with working and non-working essentials. This is where the idea of freeing off these spaces comes in handy.

Out of reach if not in use

Make use of stores and/or archives on materials that are not consumed oftenly: You do not need them around your space if they are not intended for use in any near future. It is advisable to identify the materials you daily require around, place them tidly in the nearest point of your space then take the rest to the stores or archives where they should also be arranged in an ordely manner. This procedure should be repeated oftenly because, as some materials become less useful or they are not required for the daily duties, they become scattered in our space and therefore conjest it hence making it look untidy and neglected. Regular sorting out of irrelevant materials and taking them to stores and archives helps free off unnecessarily occupied space.

Construct shelves and cabinets in your spaces

Construct shelves and purchase cabinets for your required materials, tools and other necessities. However, the size of a shelf or cabinet will depend on the size of your space. You can have an extra shelf in your kitchen, a medium size cabinet in your study room, rails and hooks in your stores and files and boxes in your archives.

Stack that stuff neatly

Your working materials can be stacked in boxes or bales especially when they are bulky, in order to make it easy to carry them around. They should also be tied or bound in regular forms and shapes to ease the task of arranging them in their necessary spaces. The tied or bound bales should be labelled in such a way that each can be identified by its content.

File those documents and insist on soft copies where necessary

Do not leave hard copies scattered around your working space especially in you office. File them as soon as you are through with them. Documents are more safe and tidy in files than when they are separately placed. Document files can then be arranged in a shelf or cabinet and labelled for easy access. This labeling can be done as per the genre of the contents. For example, if you are an accountant in an organization, you can label the document files as per departmental consumption; Procurement, human resource, marketing, production and other departments available in your firm. By so doing, locating a required document is much easier and a lot of your working space is freed. You can also consider keeping soft copies saved in your computer system rather than printouts and then generate hard copies only when the need arise. Sometimes you may need to carry some documents home for unfinished task in your office. If you always use your private car to get home, then place the documents in a file and place the files in your car back seat or booth. This will prevent them from scattering in a disorderly manner as you drive your way home. It also gives you more space for your shopping in case you want to make stop overs in either supermarkets or fast foods.

Exhaust that storage space systematically

Ensure that the storage space is completely utilized. When arranging materials in your space, make use of entire space; both vertical and horizontal. Depending on the size of your space and the nature of your materials, you can stack the materials in rows and columns moving upwards. When, for instance, you want to decongest a space that is full of bottles, then you can put them in crates and then arrange these crates in a stake of ten rows and ten colums moving up so that you have a total of fifty crates per stake. You can also do the same thing if you have your materials in boxes. Exhausting your space vertically and horizontally in a systematic order leaves your space neat, organized and frees off a considerable amount of space.