Do Your Spring Cleaning Before You Move
Well, the daffodils, tulips and azaleas have bloomed in Central Park, which means spring has most definitely sprung. And in New York, with spring comes more people outdoors, more open windows, and you guessed it – spring cleaning. If you’re a business in New York about to begin an office relocation or an office decommission, there’s nothing more important than cleaning before you start packing. Here’s why…
Everything that our movers load into a truck costs you money.
If our movers are moving boxes of outdated invoices, customer records or files of people who have long ago left the company, it could cost you unnecessarily. Of course you’ll need to maintain some files and paperwork, but if it’s no longer relevant or required by law, toss it. Remember that pile of Y2K brochures? That was 22 years ago. Files should be shredded or disposed of with care to ensure no data is breached.
Inventory your inventory.
If you have a stockroom that’s brimming with boxes of letterhead with an old logo… t-shirts from bygone events… envelopes that have lost their stick… toss them. If you haven’t used them in the past few years, or they’re obsolete, get rid of them before the move to keep your costs in check. And don’t forget to be kind to Mother Earth: T-shirts can be donated to a charity or a shelter, and paper goods like letterhead and envelopes should be recycled.
Purge those workstations, too.
Order some pizzas, crank up the tunes, get extra trash and recycling barrels and have a spring cleaning party. All staff should be encouraged to purge their workstations of unnecessary files, items and clutter. If possible, you can even encourage employees to bring their personal effects home during the move, and bring them back to the new location. (Mary from Accounting may not want to carry her desk lamp out on the J train, but you can ask her to take her photos and mousepad.)
Is that a BlackBerry?
Technology that’s broken or obsolete should be disposed of. Those old clunky CRT monitors that weigh 30 lbs. should be disposed of properly. Old desk phones (before you switched to VOIP) should be trashed. Old towers and desktop computers that ran Windows 95 can be recycled – be sure to remove the hard drive before disposal to ensure your corporate data’s security. Anything that isn’t current and usable should be recycled – and if you have a surplus of technology that is usable, consider donating it to a school or charity. The landfills don’t need it.
Take a hard look at soft furnishings.
Is that old leather couch worth moving? Will it fit in at your bright, shiny new office space? Look around at your office furnishings – including refrigerators and microwaves – and evaluate whether they’re worth the expense of moving to the new location. It could be that they don’t fit in with the new aesthetic (or square footage) and you’ll end up tossing them when you get there. Why pay to move them in the first place?
For more tips on commercial relocation, contact Eagle Transfer – experts in moving Manhattan’s businesses since 1974.