Office Declutter Checklist and Suggestions

For week four of the Declutter Challenge, we are tackling the office and craft room. This week’s office declutter checklist includes twenty-seven items commonly found in offices and crafts rooms that you can most likely discard and won’t miss! At the end of seven weeks, you will have checklists of more than 150 items that you can toss! In fact, through Week Four our lists include over one hundred and ten items! Think of it as a Decluttering Scavenger Hunt! Print off your Office Declutter Checklist and let’s get busy.

If you are new to this Declutter Challenge and you want to, as Maria (soon to be Von Trapp) suggests, start at the very beginning, pop over to week 1 where we dive into our bedrooms and bathrooms.

If you haven’t joined the Declutter Challenge yet, you can do that here. Once you join, you will receive:

• weekly emails with a declutter-your-home checklist for specific areas of the home. With these checklists, I feel that I am on a Decluttering Scavenger Hunt, which makes the whole process a wee bit more enjoyable!
• additional tips, suggestions, and resources for your successful decluttering

And it bears repeating, check out these 10 questions to ask yourself when deciding what to keep or what to discard.

Some of these links may be Amazon affiliate links and I may earn a small commission from the sale of these products to help defray the costs of operating this site, but the price you are charged is not affected. You can see my full disclosure policy here.

on to our craft room and office declutter

O.K. I feel a bit like an Airline Pilot, but if your office or craft room is anything like mine then it’s only a fair warning to say, “Buckle your seatbelts, my friends, this may get bumpy!”

Just the nature of these two rooms is that they are actual, real-life clutter magnets! All the papers coming into offices have a hard time coming back out and offices have all sorts of ‘tools’ like pencils, pens, paperclips, yada yada yada.

And then there is ‘the craft room’ (cue the eerie, creaky door sound)…every craft comes with its own set of tools, equipment, and supplies! So if you have multiple interests, then BAM, you just accumulated multiple sets of STUFF!

Trust me, I know!

All this to say, we are going to be working hard this next week, so pull up your big girl pants, grab your Office Declutter Checklist and let’s get busy. The good news is, we won’t have a hard time finding things to declutter!

office declutter

Let’s start with easy things to declutter in the office.

pens, pencils, binderclips & glue are the first to go in the office declutter

Trash all the very short pencils, especially the ones without erasers. Grab a sheet of scrap paper and take every pen and scribble on the sheet…if it is dry then toss it. If it’s a Sharpie and you feel like trying to rehabilitate it, soak the nib in some rubbing alcohol then put the top back on. After an hour, give it another try…if it is still dry then out it goes.

If you have a bunch of markers in good shape, but you just don’t use them then consider donating to your church, Boys & Girls Club, or your local senior center. I know my dad’s memory care unit is always looking for art supplies! For a more exhaustive list of where to donate or recycle your discards, pop over here.

For glue, if it is dried up, toss it.

And, how many binder clips does one family need? In our case, we decided that 37 was 30 too many!

extra/excess mailing envelopes, cardboard boxes, and bubble wrap

O.K., since we are friends, I feel I need to tell you something about me… I have a weakness for perfectly good mailing envelopes, boxes, and bubble wrap and plan to NEVER have to buy these items…EVER! Which is good and all, but…I need to keep tabs on my stash and weed it from time to time…like now.

I’ll keep a few envelopes, a few boxes, and a wee bit of bubble wrap and recycle the rest.

Christmas cards, cards and invitations

If you’ve been holding onto Christmas cards to update your address book, now’s the time to do it. Do you still have party invitations for parties from last year? What about the birthday cards sent two years ago? These are easy things to declutter!

paper…UGH!

O.K. my friends, here’s where it starts to get tough. Go through your paper files…what can be trashed?

Check out this article from FINRA concerning how long to keep financial records.

And for many of these documents, consider scanning them and storing them on your computer to reduce the paper clutter.

Along the same lines, all those manuals you are holding on to are most likely available online. At one time I trashed the hard copies and downloaded the online version only to realize that downloading them filled my hard drive and was not necessary as I could access them online when I needed it. I think you’ll be hard-pressed to not be able to find every manual you need online.

Bills that have been paid and the checks have cleared can go.

Do you have binders of stuff you’ve been saving ‘just in case’? Go ahead and scan that stuff if you really want to keep it. Just make sure to set it up in a file on your computer that makes sense.

And how many binders do you have? How many do you need? What about file folders, dividers, and the like? Once again, examine these when looking for things to declutter from your office.

For scanning, I use both my All-In-One Printer and my ScanSnap and I really put them both to good use. I try to scan just about everything that I feel I need to hold onto…say, like that receipt from paying the tolls on the WV Tollroad when I didn’t have ANY money and so I had to pay by mail! After 6 months, I was comfortable finally deleting it!

If you have a stack of business cards, either scan them or put the info right into your address book, digital or paper.

Do you hold on to last year’s calendars or planners? How long do you think you need to keep those?

Phone books…buh bye!

technology

Do you have phone cords for phones you no longer own? Can you identify all the cords you have in your office?

For the cords you do need, consider labeling the cords so you know what they are for. I share some cord management suggestions in this post, but find a label maker comes in handy for all sorts of organizing.

Recycle the ones you don’t need or really don’t know what they are for (all the more reason to label them). Best Buy will accept cords for recycling.

Are any other machines lying about that you don’t use? Sell, donate or recycle them.

craft room

There is no avoiding it friends, we need to tackle the craft room using our Declutter Checklist! And I am adopting a ‘take no prisoners’ approach here, so be prepared.

Do you have supplies for projects that were purchased with the best of intentions, but if, after taking truth serum, you admit that you will probably never tackle them? Once again, Boys & Girls Clubs, Schools, Senior Centers, Memory Care Centers, etc.. will gladly accept them.

I took mountains of yarn to our local Senior Center as they knit beanies for newborns at the hospital, but before I took this yarn over, I made sure I saved a few balls of 100% wool yarn to make dryer balls! Not only will you save money by not having to purchase these, but you will also help the environment.

Lastly, after I had chosen the balls of yarn I wanted to keep, some of them were very yellowed and dingy…so check out this post to see how I washed my yellowed and dingy yarn.

stickers, stamps, and markers

If you don’t use them, those places I just listed above will be thrilled to have them.

scraps of …whatever

I am a world-class scrap accumulator! Be it yarn, paper, or fabric! After years of those perfectly good scraps cluttering up my space, I’ve decided they need to hit the road.

dried paints and markers are easy to declutter

If they can’t be resuscitated, then they need to go.

vases

How many vases from floral deliveries do you REALLY need?

dried flowers

Look hard and long…you love them?

What have I overlooked? What needs to be added to the office declutter checklist?

I’d love your input. I plan to add to the lists to make them even more comprehensive and greatly appreciate your input.

So, armed with this motivation, grab your Craft Room/ Office Declutter Checklist and let the Decluttering Scavenger hunt begin!

Pop back in with your successes or challenges! How many items were you able to check off of your list?

Thanks for making my day by SHARING!!