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If you have a home office, you’ve probably found it’s become a dumping ground for old bills, paperwork from the kids’ school, tax records and other miscellaneous documents. The office is an easy place to put personal documents to one side, close the door, and tell yourself you’ll find the time to deal with them later.

This can be especially challenging if you’re one of the 31% of Canadians who works fully remotely from home on a regular nine-to-five schedule or if you have a self-started small business that operates from your own home.

In these cases, personal paperwork will inevitably begin to mix with company paperwork, creating a messy, disorganized and cluttered home office — which, unbeknownst to you, could be holding you back!

Here, we will share some tips on tidying up, some pointers on how a tidy office can reduce stress and significantly improve productivity, and how our residential document destruction service can help you reach your organizational goals.

Read on to find out how shredding services can improve order and productivity in your home office.

An Organized Workspace Reduces Stress

Whether you're aware of it or not, work brings an element of stress — even on good days.

An organized home office can help to temper your simmering levels of worry. Organization means that you know where everything is at any given time. So if your boss asks for a rundown on your latest report mid-Zoom call, you can act on the spot. Or, if you're on a call with a potential client and they request your recent social stats, you can recite them in real time like a true pro.

Knowing where everything is will significantly reduce day-to-day stress as there's no last-minute scrambling to find the binder, paper or file that you’re looking for. It also makes moving on to the next task a breeze.

It’s a Boost to Concentration

A visually busy and cluttered office is negatively impacting your focus. A study by the Princeton University Neuroscience Institute found that participants were able to focus and process information better, and that their productivity was increased when they had a clutter-free workspace.

This was attributed to how our brains process visual information — we organize what’s in front of us and mentally put it into order. When a desk or room is in chaos, it’s challenging to put what’s before us into any sort of system.

Through scheduled document destruction on a regular basis, you can keep your home office clear of expired personal and professional paperwork, removing any cognitive hurdles when you try to process your physical surroundings.

Tidiness Will Improve Your Mood

It’s safe to say that when we feel rundown or blue, our productivity is impacted, and not in a good way. Whether your home office is designated for personal use, or you use it professionally, chaos, clutter and mess can really drag you down.

In a study by the Anxiety and Depression Association of America, researchers found that cleaning your desk and workspace can help to clear your mind. They noted that this can not only reduce stress, but that anxiety will be allayed, too, which can improve your concentration on work-related tasks.

Background Clutter Looks Unprofessional

Whether you run a home-based business, you’re a freelancer, you work from home for someone else, or you’re still in school, having a cluttered, busy, and disorganized background during virtual meetings looks unprofessional — like you don’t have a handle on your immediate surroundings.

By keeping on top of disposing of old files and taking the time to securely shred old contracts, employee paperwork, financial records and other office papers, you’re crafting a space that looks slick, organized and professional.

Keeping on Top of Home Organization Can Help with Domestic Tasks

It goes without saying that we accumulate unnecessary bits and pieces in our homes; we’re all guilty of stowing away paperwork — just in case!

Why not challenge yourself to purge your personal papers this weekend? Go through binders, piles of documents and bundles of unopened envelopes to see precisely what you need. You'll often find that you're sitting on papers with no true value.

Taking the time for a routine purge will make life easier and more productive in the long haul. For example, when you decide to move home, by keeping on top of the papers in your home office, the mountain that comes with moving houses will seem that much smaller. So don’t wait to set aside the documents to destroy when you’re moving; keep on top of things by doing it on a regular basis.

The Additional Benefits of Shredding Services

There are other benefits to shredding sensitive and defunct papers, whether they’re personal or professional. Keeping on top of unnecessary papers and shredding them through a professional shredding service — which guarantees the absolute destruction of your sensitive documents — will keep you safe from a data breach. Small businesses are not immune from data breaches; 70 percent of data breaches target small businesses in particular.

The secure shredding of papers from your home office will go a long way towards protecting you, your family, and any employees (if you run a business) from identity theft.

Let Us Help You Improve Personal and Professional Productivity

Shredding services can help you curb unnecessary papers, which will improve stress, concentration, and productivity in your home office.

Partnering with a secure document destruction company, like us at Absolute Destruction, allows you to focus your energies elsewhere — like growing your business or focusing your attention on nailing that in-house promotion — instead of wasting your valuable time shredding papers through a slow-moving home shredder.

Our mobile shredding truck can come to you. We offer our residential shredding service in Toronto and throughout the Greater Toronto Area. We have options for a one-time pick up or a regularly scheduled service — whatever works best for you and your needs.

Contact us for a quote, and we’ll be with you to securely destroy your sensitive papers, freeing up valuable space in your home office in no time.