Declutter my work office

So I’ve made a lot of progress this week on packing my two offices to move into my new office. I should’ve been working harder on clearing out my private office after I’d moved across the hall a few months back, but there was always other higher priorities. Now that I’ve got to be out of the building by Monday, there’s no more time for excuses.

I have had boxes from six other office spaces that have moved without being unpacked. Because my new space doesn’t have as much room as any of the former spaces had I’ve taken the time this week to go through those boxes instead of blanket moving them. I’ve actually found some really cool things in those boxes (like my NREMT card). I found copies of letters of resignation, as well as letters of job offers. I found old photos, and memos about important changes in the company. I found a lot of stuff that I should’ve thrown out a long time ago. (The latest box had programming requests from 1997.)

I’ve got one more box to go through, but I’ve consolidated ten boxes down into three. Of course there are way more boxes than that getting moved, but those seven less boxes will make a big difference.

Now the real challenge will be once I’m in my new office will I take the time to unpack or will these boxes just sit there collecting dust like the dozen boxes did from former moves?

I took a first load of stuff over to my new office today. My goal is to put everything in its place to begin with and then not let things stack up like I normally do.

I made some progress on purging files too, getting rid of three bankers boxes worth of stuff. Of course I’ve got another dozen banker boxes to sort through too, so that is my task for the next couple of days. I took some stuff home today too (including last year’s 43Things card exchange cards). I still have a lot to do though before I can mark this done.

to get things done! We actually were given an entire afternoon to clean up our offices. The directions were a bit vague as to what types of personal stuff we can keep so most people simply took everything home. I relegated all my pix (and dragon) to one shelf that people can not see from outside my office. The directions on “clean desk” were easy to understand. We have all sorts of vendors coming through the office and there is lots of stuff they should not see.

I do see some of my bad habits coming back but with a clean office it is much easier to take care of small clutter as it happens.

systems…
I have been making “systems” for my office (little ways of dealing with particular activities). For one of these, I found a nice folder organizer someone else was throwing away. It is bulky and not too preaty and I have knocked files out of it once so far but there it sits on the corner of my desk. Each project get’s its own folder and they live on that corner of my desk until they are finished. Only one at a time can come out. It actually makes life a bit easier. When my boss wants to discuss a certain project, it is easy to grab the folder.

temptation…
I had a VERY long week last week (12-14 hours in the office plus 1.5 hours commuting each day). On Friday I was so tired and was going to be able to leave on time. I actually turned off my computer stood up and thought that I would not bother putting away the paperwork on the desk, that I would just deal with it on Monday. Then something came over me that said that was ridiculous. I have been doing so well for so long and it really would just be 2 minutes of effort and it would make coming into work Monday much more enjoyable. I am glad I was able to make the decision to keep up my “clean streak”.

I have managed to keep the main working area of my desk clean for over 2 weeks now. I accomplished that by pushing everything to my credenza behind my desk (ok, that was a bit of cheating). While waiting for a meeting to start this morning, I decided to start tackling that credenza. I picked up just one pile of papers and went through them:

1) file for reading later
2) file with active/closed project folders
3) file in “circular file cabinet”
4) take some action based on that paper

More than once I found myself holding a piece of paper with some information I wanted and thinking, “I will keep this piece of paper until I get a chance to store the information I need.” Each time I had to remind myself to only touch the paper once. Make a decision right then and there. For the slips of paper with addresses on them, I added the address to my contacts etc. Sure felt good.

I can start to feel control coming into other areas of my life. As I get and KEEP things organized in some areas, the desire to expand that organization to other areas grows more intense.

For 2 weeks I have been comitted to keeping my main work desk clean. Every project in it’s own folder and only one folder open at a time.

Now the credenza behind me is a different matter. It was actually the easy part of getting my desk clean. Everything was simply moved to the credenza. Viola, a clean desk!!

Seriously, I am trying to do this one small thing. Hopefully the good habit will spread to other areas of my office. My next promotion will be to a Director at which point I really MUST be more organized. Hey, that could link nicely to another goal of “growth at work”.

It’ll be wonderful to come to work now!! Not really, but at least my desk is nice and clean. :)

If I don’t finish this today, it’ll be a couple weeks before I can get to it again. Lots of things happening at work the next couple of week!!

I’m almost finished. How’s my team mate doing? :D