How to Organise Your Office with a Lateral File Cabinet

Keeping a neat office is an essential part of maintaining focus and productivity in the workplace. The more organised your office space is, the easier it is to retrieve documents, remain in a positive flow state, and complete tasks quickly. Unfortunately, this is easier said than done, as we all know how quickly an out-of-place folder can transform into a heap of unorganised files and documents.

That is why we always recommend taking an active step in maintaining a tidy office by incorporating storage furniture into your workspace. With this small addition, you can quickly tuck away files and documents when you’re not using them, ensuring your workspace remains neat and organised. In this post, we will be focusing on lateral file cabinets, how they work, and how you can use them to clean up your office.

What are Lateral File Cabinets?

A lateral file cabinet is a unique storage solution that features a broad, yet slim, frame, allowing you to store documents in a side-to-side manner. With this simple change, you can easily view all your paperwork immediately after you open the drawer, which means you no longer have to flick through your documents when you want to access a new file. Its compact layout also means that lateral file cabinets don’t take up as much space when opened, making them the perfect storage solution for smaller workspaces and home offices.

Organising Your Office with a Lateral File Cabinet

Once you have purchased your lateral file cabinet, you can begin the organisation process and tidy up your space. While there are countless approaches, you may want to consider these steps:

Label Your Drawers

The harder it is to remember where an item belongs, the more likely it is to end up abandoned on your desk or buried underneath a growing heap of documents on your floor. To avoid this, make sure you label each drawer of your lateral file cabinet with clear names that make it obvious where each document should go. For instance, if you work in a medical centre, you can have one drawer for patient records and another for reference materials.

Choose an Organisation System Within Your Drawers

Labelling your drawers is just the first step to maintaining a clean workspace. Within your cabinets, you should also use an organisation system that makes it straightforward to know precisely where an item is stored. One of the most popular organisational systems that most people use today is storing folders alphabetically. Still, you are free to use other systems, depending on your company’s requirements.

You can also take things a step further by using multiple organisational systems to make it even easier to retrieve documents when you need them. For instance, you can organise your folders alphabetically and then add colour coding for improved efficiency. This combination of organisation systems can be crucial if you have hundreds of similar documents in your lateral file cabinet and want to make it easier to retrieve items.