Organizing Your Desk

I’m feeling a bit claustrophobic over here. Like the walls are closing in and I’m starting to drown in “stuff”.

Bits and pieces of everything are strewn about everywhere, and I can’t find a clean surface to sit and work at. It’s making me crazy!

No use complaining – fix it right?

We’ll start with my desk; I do everything here. E-mail, pay bills, blog, photo edit, eat lunch, surf – and pile all of my little bits of paper with things 2 do, ideas, messages etc.

I guess I brush the girls’ hair here too?

I know where everything is, but looking at this causes me stress. Clutter has the effect of making my trapezius muscles flex (the connector muscle from your neck to your shoulder).

Time to purge and get some desk organization done.

The chocolate bars aren’t going anywhere – let’s face it, that’s the only trapezius-muscle-relaxant I have most days, but I think I can part with a few notepads and maybe a dozen pens or so?

What’s that in the back? A cd labeller? My computer doesn’t even have a cd drive – so that can probably go too.

Looks better already right? If you empty the entire drawer out you are less likely to just shuffle and store. Emptying before desk organization forces you to go through items one-by-one in order to sort them and put them back in the drawer. You’re also more likely to purge – there is a tendency to avoid cluttering up a clean space, so some items will make your trash/recycle list just to appease your psyche.

Are you a pen/pencil hoarder? I am was. I hated throwing out working pens because “you might need one” sometime.

Let’s be realistic here – if you have 10 pens in your drawer you’re probably just as safe “just in case” as you would be with 50 in the drawer. Why do we keep so many? Does my brain really think that 49 of them will suddenly dry out and there will only be one pen left in the entire house to write with?

Do people even write very much anymore?

Desk organization = Time to go.

Because I use my camera and iPad at my computer, it just made sense to keep their chargers and cords close by. I used this glass dish I found at Potterybarn to keep them corralled so they don’t slide all over the drawer.

Below you’ll notice that there aren’t nearly as many notepads and business cards. I was holding onto my first business card – which I’d be far too embarrassed to hand out – “just in case” I ran out of the new ones. I also noticed that I have a tendency to buy notepads – those $1 bins at Michael’s get me every time…. but do I really need 12? Probably not.

The chocolate bars were re-homed to the back of the drawer in the hopes that making them a bit more difficult to reach will make me less likely to grab one. I don’t really think it will work, but it’s worth a shot.

Books were put back onto bookshelves and papers were filed into file folders – and look how much space I have!

Turns out desk organization also equivocates to more candy bar storage!!

Who knew there was a top to my desk?!

You don’t have to buy expensive organizers to make this happen either. It turned out I had enough in my desk, but I was fully intending on using tuna cans (cleaned of course) adhered to the bottom of the drawer with sticky tac, to corral paper clips, elastics, thumb tacks etc. The sticky tac won’t hurt your furniture and the cans can be quite cute if you have a few in a neat row.

The organizing didn’t stop here either.

Once I decided it was time to purge pens, Hubby’s desk got a bit of organizing as well.

He’s forever scrambling looking for USB sticks – but once I emptied and cleared I found a dozen. Now that they’re housed in one spot, he’ll be able to easily find his presentation or a stick to store new files on to.