Desk Challenge
Ohhh, you might hate me for this... This month’s decluttering challenge is DESKS! In the spirit of Back-to-School season, refreshing your work space and clearing all the desk detritus will actually reduce your overall stress, help you focus, and create a place where you want to sit down and get shit done.
There are a couple of strategies for dealing with desks. One is the scorched earth policy. Sweep everything off your workstation into a box and give that surface a loving wipe down, then go burn the box in the backyard. LOL, just kidding. The box will need to be sorted eventually. Option 2. Go through every item on the desk individually and start sorting now. I don’t think one option is better than the other, it’s more about your personality. Will the dopamine hit from seeing a gorgeous cleared desktop motivate you to keep sorting? If not, when you need something from the box, you’ll be forced to sort it (or dig through it everytime, which actually sounds really annoying). Or you can use a more methodical item by item strategy where the gorgeous clean desktop will be the end reward. Either way, you still need to sort all that stuff, but be prepared to take this on in phases or waves. First let's sort the macro, then we can get into the micro. a little plug for my business- I love doing this, so if you absolutely hate it, and live near me, you can hire me to do this for you.
Step 1: Macro categories. Boxes and bags are a good idea here. Only sort into piles on the floor if you know you have time to phase into micro categories before the day is over.
trash
paper items (like business cards, mail, to-do lists, etc., ) **You can put ALL paper items in here for now and sort it later, if you’d like. Or do a little pre-sorting by starting bags for
Recycling
Shredding-anything with identifiable information should be shredded
Action items
Miscellaneous
office supplies
mementos/pictures/fidget-toys/knickknacks
books/resources
stuff to return to a completely different part of your home because desks seem to be magnets for stuff we don’t feel like dealing with in the moment.
small electronics/wires/cords/thumb drives/headphones
Project specific items
Each thing on your desk should be able to go into one of these categories. Don’t forget the walls around your desk space. Do you have a bulletin board with a to-do list from 2019, now’s the time to refresh that space too. Do you have drawers? Open those up and see what state they’re in. If they’re stuffed with a mix of items from different categories, you should empty them and macro sort that stuff too.
Look around the rest of your home for piles of mail, jars of pencils, extra office supplies, and whatnot. If you have a large home, it might make sense to have multiple desks or workstations, but if you live in a smaller dwelling, it’ll be easier to find what you need if your admin tools are all in one place.
If you got this far and your desk is cleared, great job! It’s a clean slate for you to create a work space that is calm and not overwhelming, so ONLY return the items that you use every single time you sit down to work. We’ll talk about redecorating with your pictures and knick knacks lower down.
Step 2: Take the trash out and move the box of stuff that doesn’t belong near your desk far away. That box is not today’s problem.
Now let’s deal with the categories one at a time and do some micro-sorting.
Paper: This is the big one and probably the most time consuming. You’ll need several paper bags or boxes. I like to write on the bags in big letters, RECYCLING, SHREDDING, ACTION ITEMS, and a small pile of important hard copies that need to be filed. If you need to make a digital copy first, then it’s an action item. I tend to consider things that need to be saved “action items” because there are physical steps involved to make that happen. While you’re in the trenches of clearing your desk, don’t get distracted by the action items. You forgot it existed until now, so it can wait until you finish sorting.
Action Items: you need two bags/boxes. URGENT (MUST be dealt with in the next 30 days) and Not Urgent (includes things that just need to be saved)
URGENT pile: Depending on how large this pile is, you might want to sort it into sub categories, like home, finances, work, kids, etc., but Urgent is urgent regardless, so make this as tidy as possible a pile and put it on that gorgeous freshly cleared desktop. The goal is to get them taken care of and moved to the shred or file categories ASAP.
Non-urgent pile: You can ignore this one for a while if you want, or do a little pre-action sorting. I use a clipboard system to separate different types of action items. I like clipboards over folders because once something goes inside a folder, my brain forgets it exists. I usually add a sticky note with a to-do list or quick explanation of that action item group, so I don’t have to look too closely at the papers themselves to know what I’m getting myself into when I’ve got time to take action.
Filing hard copies of important stuff: What is important enough to keep? Easy answer, keep the obvious stuff like birth certificates, marriage licenses, social security cards forever, minimum seven years of tax returns and supportive documents (you don’t need actual receipts if you’ve made digital copies), and one copy of each utility statement (just one ever, not each month!) That’s the basic minimalist advice on what you need to hold onto in paper, but what you really need to file will be different for everyone. Filing systems will probably get a whole blog post in the future. Organizing a filing cabinet can be a multi-day project, but if you‘ve already got a working system, get that filing put away. Or if you’re like me, set it on top of the filing box, so you have to put it away the next time you need to get something out.
Office Supplies: I’m pretty sure everyone goes through a phase where they just adore office supplies. Maybe just me? Anyways, it’s sorting fun time! You can just make a bunch of little piles on the floor or table, but receptacles will keep it much tidier. My favorite organizing hack is to cut the tops off small boxes from the recycling (like tea, toothpaste, or baking mix boxes) and reinforce the sides with a little tape. Now you have containers to keep all the different items separate, like erasers, post-its, tape, pushpins, paperclips.... I use wide mouth mason jars and broken coffee mugs to sort the different kinds of writing/drawing tools like pencils, pens, highlighters, sharpies, colored pencils, and markers. If you come across something that doesn’t have any friends like it, make a bowl for miscellaneous. The little boxes can be cut down to fit inside of drawers or all kept together on a tray or inside a larger box. This doesn’t have to be your final system. There are lots of creative ways to organize office supplies, including fancy drawer inserts, tackle boxes, or a ziploc baggie system. The important thing is that you discard anything that’s empty or broken, take inventory of what you have, and avoid buying more supplies you don’t need. **I don’t believe in a perfect organizing system. Our needs are too fluid for that, which is why I like using recycling for containers, since I can just recycle it once it’s no longer useful.
Mementos/pictures/tchotchkes: First consider that some of these things might be better taken care of or appreciated displayed somewhere else in your home, but if you’d like to improve the vibe of your work station, decorate intentionally. The wall space around you might be better for pictures than wedging them between two pieces of mail. If you like to have fidget toys nearby, maybe only have one or two out, and put the rest away to be rotated out occasionally. Paper items that fall in this category, like ticket stubs, playbills, and postcards, honestly, don’t belong on your desk. This is where you work, not where you want to get distracted going down memory lane. Put those in your non-urgent action items and we can talk about fun ways to save and honor those memories another time.
Books/Printed Resources: These belong on a bookshelf, not stacked in a pile on your desk. If you use this kind of stuff often, I hope you are able to have a bookshelf within arms reach of your desk. For the stuff you don’t use often and can’t fit on a bookshelf, ask yourself are they up-to-date and still relevant to your work? If not, do you want to and have the space to be the keeper of archived, out of date reference materials? You are allowed to donate these. Sometimes we just need to give ourselves permission to not be the keepers of stuff. It is not your responsibility to keep all the stuff. If you’re worried you might need it someday, see if you can locate a digital copy online or make your own. If you’re holding onto them to read that one article someday, tear it out, add it to your Action Items, and recycle the rest. This is a tough category for some. It’s okay to feel a little anxious. It might help to attach post-it notes to items that say “recycle/donate by a ______date unless you use it”, as a reminder that you’ve already spent mental energy thinking about what to do with it, and if you don’t read it within a year, it’s okay to let it go.
Small electronics/cords/chargers/computer odds and ends: This is my least favorite category. When I found out Ridwell (recycling pickup service) accepted cords and chargers, I signed up that day. This is what I decided I needed to keep in my home stored in a drawer, beyond what was actively being used by our electronics on a daily basis. Two USB to USC cords, two USC to USC cords, one that had a mini USB at one end, one old apple charging cord, one charging block of each type, one extra power strip, one extension cord, a small plastic baggie with 3 pairs of earbuds, one portable hard drive, and one thumb drive. Your list may be longer or shorter, no judgment. It is very nice to have them all separated and easy to find when the need arises. I’ve seen cool systems with dozens of cords, individually stored inside empty toilet paper rolls. If you need them, then that’s great. But if the cord is for a cell phone that hasn’t been turned on in 5 years, it’s okay to recycle it. Target and Home Depot both collect e-waste, but you might find somewhere closer with a quick google search.
If you’ve been stashing small electronics around your desk because they are parts of projects, keep reading.
Project Specific Boxes: Most of us need our desks or workstations to be multi-purpose, and when different materials of a project get mixed up with all the other desk mess, that project is unlikely to make progress. Sorting stuff by project can help you see exactly what you have and how much storage space you need for that project. It also might inspire you to complete the project and move on from it. What to do with the leftover materials? Donate them, unless it’s an ongoing hobby, then choose an accessible more permanent storage space, so all that stuff doesn't live on top of your desk. If it’s something you value doing, it deserves a dedicated space.
Step 3: Maintenance. Desks can be magical creative bubbles or utilitarian efficiency stations. They can also become scary black holes where bills and to-do lists get sucked into another dimension. After you’ve put all this work into cleaning your desk, how can you keep it that way? Mainly, don’t treat your desk as a dropbox. When you pick up the mail, immediately sort it into the recycling/shredding bags, and drop the action items into your action item container. When you get home with purchases for your projects, drop them in their project specific places, not on top of the desk. There’s a really cute idea I’ve seen around the internet about “putting the kitchen to bed” at night. Try putting your desk to bed each night. Before going to sleep yourself, remove any trash or dirty dishes, put away non-desk stuff, tidy the action items or put them back on the shelf, and arrange your daily tools so that they can rest too and be ready for tomorrow.
You made it to the end of this article! When your desk is clean, I’d love to see and validate all that hard work. Post a pic and tag me @themonthlypurge on instagram. Happy Sorting!