Maintaining the lab in a clean, organized state is important both for safety and for science. After all, you can’t be doing great science when you’re spending all your time looking for tools lost in piles of junk.
Here’s a checklist to help you organize your lab. Post it on the back of the door and teach every lab researcher to run down the checklist before leaving. Just a little bit of cleanup per day will eventually make the most messy lab a tidy, efficient, and safe place to do science.
Do you leave experiments running after-hours or over the weekend? Are you ready in case an incident might occur? Establishing clear procedures for late or unattended work may help prevent a minor incident from becoming a serious one. See this article by Richard Paluzzi, a noted lab safety expert, for more detail.
The Laboratory Safety Advocates Office has developed an unattended experiment form that you should fill and post on the laboratory door and next to the experiment. If you have questions about filling out this form contact your PI, laboratory manager or the Laboratory Safety Advocates Office.