For many of us, our vehicle is our office on the road. We use our vehicles to conduct business, travel to and sometimes even transport our clients. Doesn’t it make sense that your office on wheels is as efficient and productive as your brick and mortar office space?
For others, our vehicle is a part taxi, part utilitarian and part restaurant on wheels. Perhaps your vehicle is for pleasure driving or you feel it reflects your status or position. Regardless, if you are like me and live in a city where mass transit is not a viable option, A LOT of time is spent in your vehicle.
What does your vehicle say about you? You might be surprised how keeping it neat and clean can completely change both your experience of driving and the impression you may be giving yourself and/or your business. Don’t let your business suffer by making a bad first impression.
4 Steps to Organization
If you read most any blog or website relating to organization, the process is broken down into 4 basic steps. Professional organizers will come up with all types of acronyms and fancy ways to brand the concept, but it still always comes down to these 4 things:
Step One – Sort
Go through your vehicle and sort out everything that you find. Place all of the items that you find into general categories such as emergency supplies, cleaning, office supplies, sporting gear, music, trash and recycling for example.
Step Two – Purge
Remove everything from the vehicle that does not need to be there on a regular basis. This will include trash and other items that were put in the car for a one-time event but are not looked for or consistently used in the car for a specific purpose. Once the car is empty, this is the perfect time to clean the interior.
Step Three – Organize
Organize what is left. By placing the sorted items into general categories, it will give you a very clear idea how much space a particular category, such as office supplies or sporting equipment, requires. Once you have determined your categories and the volume of those categories, you can come up with a storage solution for each category that will be adequate. Keep your categories separated and place the items where you use them. For instance, office supplies might be required near the driver’s seat but sporting equipment could easily be stowed away in the trunk. A quick search online will reveal organizers of all types and sizes for your vehicle. If you absolutely have to keep a lot of items in your vehicle, keep them contained and preferably out of sight in the trunk.
Step four – Maintenance
Any organization system is only as good as how well it is used and how frequently it is maintained. Schedule time to clean and organize your vehicle just like you do your office space or house. Remove trash at the end of every day, make sure to put items in their assigned area, create new and purge old categories and storage solutions as your needs change and……
Get a car wash
If you have always avoided getting a car wash because of the expense, times have changed. Recently, a number of very inexpensive options have become available to keep the outside of your vehicle looking neat and clean. For example, Cobblestone Auto Spa now offers a $3 exterior wash option. Drive through the car wash and drive away. This literally takes about 5 minutes of my time and the cost is so reasonable it’s hard to argue with. Now that you have the inside of the vehicle organized and the items contained, cleaning the interior will be a breeze as well.
The Streamlined Office has been called to help business owners and individuals put organized systems in place in their vehicles too! Contact us at 480-221-0588 for more information.