Welcome to the 30-Day Organize-athon!
In today’s 5 minutes we’re going to express-declutter your desk, den, study, or home office area.
Let’s start.
Day 15: Declutter Your Home Office
Step 1: Grab a large garbage bag.
Step 2: Quickly making your way around your desk, den, study, or home office area, toss these items into the bag as you go:
- School or college notes and texts – unless you just graduated they’re likely to be out of date
- Equipment you don’t use – such as a 2-hole punch if you use 3-ring binders
- Excess stationery you won’t use this decade
- Knickknacks that provide no meaning, beauty or inspiration
- Reading piles you’ll never get to – which, let’s face it, means most reading piles
- Books you’ll never read
- Old computer or software manuals
- Birthday, Christmas and greeting cards – unless they’re genuinely special to you
- Outdated printers, scanners, fax machines (check for disposal info with your local council)
- Defunct phones, computers, cells, PDAs etc. (ditto)
- Abandoned projects and hobbies and the various accompanying supplies, storage containers, etc.
- Old notebooks not needed for reference
- Old lamps, chairs and other equipment in poor condition
- Doubles of staplers, hole punches, scissors, rulers, etc.
- Any item you haven’t used in the past 12 months
- Anything broken, yucky, tatty, or inconsistent with your standards of professionalism, especially if you work from home.
Step 3: Put your bag by the door or take it straight out to the car. (Take it to the tip as soon as you can.)
Step 4: If there’s something genuinely valuable in there, put it into a separate charity store bag. If it doubt, don’t over-analyze – toss it.
And you’re done!
Got an Extra 5 Minutes?
- Return items that don’t belong in the home office area to the proper place – the kids’ bedrooms, the living room, the kitchen, etc.
- Neaten anything else that lives in the home office area.
- Straighten the desk and wipe it down.
- Pop a cushion on the chair to make it more comfortable.
Now don’t you feel like doing some work here?
The 30-Day Organize-athon Mantra
Move fast. Don’t overthink. Let it go!
Leave Your Comment Below…
Pleave your comment below to say you’ve completed today’s task.
See you tomorrow!
[Image by aussiegall]
OK cleared out our office today. Lots on the to do list, but all my work stuff has gone back to the office with just my current workload in my wheely briefcase at home, it’s a start…
A start is fantastic. You’ve made such great progress already. 🙂
This is todays packing project! Since I am a teacher, I collected and amassed VOLUMES of school supplies. All of the supplies and art and crafts are getting packed up today and I am almost positive, we will be saving quite a bit of money going back to school because I don’t think I need to buy anything for the kiddies other than a few folders.
A tidy office AND money saved – yay Stacey!
This was a hard one 🙂
done
done
Another lol – 5 minutes done, desk area more to go…
done!
Home Office – this was HUGE and was started with renovations in Jan – so I can tick this box off DONE
http://edaic.wordpress.com/2011/04/20/day-15-30×5-organize-athon-work-in-progress/
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Finally finished this one! Whew!!!
done
Done finally 🙂 I do have a pretty good filing system so I just have to make sure I keep it up to date.
It turned into 30…
Thanks for the 5 minute motivator to get the office clutter off the desk! Needed it as I’ve been dumping in here the last couple weeks instead of filing. Finished!