Declutter my office

The bad news is that I didn’t make any progress this last weekend.

The good news is that a good friend came to my office today and noticed that the piles have shrunk. Yay! She told me it looks good. Well it doesn’t really look good, but it does look better and that’s progress.

My friend’s kind comment has spurred me to keep going on this one.

was a bit rough. Two people criticized my space for its abundance of “stuff” and clutter. I have to remember that although I know I’ve made a bit of a start its not obvious to everyone else. I have to be patient, not get discouraged and keep plugging away at it. Consistency will be the most important (and the hardest) part.

This weekend I made a bit more progress. This time the work is definitely not be obvious (or even visible) to anyone but me. I went through a stack of things for filing. I created new files and went through some old files (circa 2001) to purge and make room for the new.

The benefit will not come by way of accolades from my coworkers. This time it will have to be my own knowledge that I filled a recycling container and now a few more of my files are accessible and current. It should mean I will be more likely to use and access the files I have.

I have so much stuff it doesn’t even all fit in my own office. Granted, my office is the tiniest possible space you could call an office, but that’s no excuse.

My latest idea for how to approach getting rid of stuff is to start going through boxes of old stuff. Materials so old it should be easy to review and get rid of a lot. If I could do one box per week it would be great progress for me. I’ll try to make the majority of my progress on my weekend work day. Some boxes have too much paper to get through in one long work session, but I’ll see if I can make some progress every week.

Of course going through boxes of old stuff isn’t going to do any good unless I can at the same time keep up with processing all the current and incoming piles of material. Somehow I always generate a lot of paper.

Today I got my start. I actually managed to do two boxes this week. I doubt that will happen again. In this case the contents of those boxes were easy to toss. They contained books and training materials for software that we don’t even use any more.

I have some current piles on the desk I want to sort through in the next week. We’ll see how it goes.

I keep spiral bound notebooks with all my notes in them. I have one for work stuff and one for home which I carry back and forth. They sit on my desk while I’m working during the day. My desk is messier than messy. I really need to do something about it but I haven’t. But my notebooks (although they look messy thanks to my handwriting) are very important to me, everything is in date order, and they always stay in the same spot handy on my desk.

Late yesterday I noticed that while one of my notebooks was sitting unattended someone came into my office and must have needed a piece of paper to write on because they tore about 1/3 sheet off a page I had already written on in my notebook! That REALLY bugged me. I tried to figure out why on earth someone would do that. Would they like me to go their office and tear part of a page out of their Daytimer? I just didn’t get it.

Throughout the evening every time I turned to my notebook to use it my mind kept coming back to how this could have happened. It felt like a violation. It occurred to me that the person who did this must not have known how important my notebooks are to me. Could be that they looked around at the mess that is my desk and office and figured nothing in there was important to me because it wasn’t organized and tidy. Maybe they didn’t have respect for my notebook because to their eyes I didn’t have any self-respect for my things.

There is a public space right outside my office and as I look out there I can see that I have let a few things “migrate” to that public space that are mine and should be in my office. Maybe I need to have more respect for other (even public) spaces and keep my stuff in my own space. This is what I mean about hard edges. If you consistently follow the rules about where your stuff belongs and how it should be organized, others get the idea that they should also follow the rules. But if things are in disarray perhaps they think it’s okay for them to treat your things with that same disrespect.

Please don’t get me wrong, I’m not at all excusing the person who violated my notebook. And if I find out who it was they will get a stern talking to! But maybe if I clean up my act a bit I will be at less risk for someone acting this way in my space in the future. Sort of like the broken window syndrome I guess.

A few days ago I spent an evening working on getting my desk in better shape. It still has a ways to go but it’s definitely better. I also took care of some things on the floor that were in the way. I sort of did it for my boss who I knew would be in town the next day. But I think in the end I got more benefit from it than she did.

The following morning I had to go to a doctor appointment before coming to work. And I kept thinking “gee, I can’t wait to get in to the office so I can work at my nice cleaner desk!”

Now if I can just keep it from getting piled up again.

you read about a “messiest office” online contest where the prize is $10,000. There are smaller prizes awarded each week of the contest period and those finalists will go on to win the grand prize.

You look at some of the pictures of the previous finalist offices and realize that your office probably wouldn’t win because it’s too small to hold the amount of clutter shown in the pictures. But in looking at the pictures you get a distinct feeling of “these are my people!”

Yikes.

I’m not sure why I have such a hard time with this one. I need to do something about it though. I believe people judge how productive, organized or professional you are based on the neatness of your workspace even though there may not be a direct correlation. I want to be thought of as having my act together so I really need to create some better habits for myself.

My whole office needs cleaning up but the obvious first place to start is with the desk. I’ve added a personal challenge “work on clearing off my desk daily for 30 days” to my list. I have so many piles of paper and lists it probably won’t get done in 30 days, but my goal is to use the 30 days to establish a habit of working on it every day.

I find it so difficult to make progress on this one. Setting aside some time today and hope to make a dent.