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- School or college notes and texts – unless you just graduated they’re likely to be out of date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- Outdated printers, scanners, fax machines (check for disposal info with your local council)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]
It’s amazing what can be done in 5 minutes! All 15 challenges completed!
5 minutes done but more work to go. Those abandoned hobbies are everywhere! 🙂
This one is a biggie! It’s done!
8-15 done. Half way through and ready for the next 15.
I assumed the home office would be one of the tasks, so I bought a file box for documents that need to be kept long term, which are now no longer with the other files. I had been working on the home office space on and off since January, so it wasn’t bad, and now all the drawers and cabinets feel more open and all is tidy.
Okay, am I the only one that took an hour to do this 15 minute task??? Finally done. I’m excited that I’ve kept up and done all to this point.
At the halfway point, and I’ve done them all. Yay, me!
Finished! It was tough, but all 15 are now done.
All 15 completed – feeling so much better!
Finished!! This wasn’t too hard since I just straightened it up last weekend
been working on this, have more to do, but will keep at it!
I actually did this as part of my spring cleaning last weekend!! Yeah…done for today!!
done all 15 🙂
done
Done! Should have set a timer….think it took much more than 5 minutes.
This will be ongoing for us. There are 4 of us in a small office and it really is pretty organized. Painting in some other rooms, so it is a bit of a catch all. Taking the baby steps and organization completed for today!
Boy I REALLY NEEDED to do that. Thanks again.
T
Tasks 8-15 – completed
I JUST moved my home office at the beginning of March from the basement to the bonus room over the garage, so this is a big DONE! I had just added a pillow to the chair on Monday! Great minds…
anyway, this gives me a chance to spend MORE time on yesterday’s taclke your paper challenge…the office has no piles, the rest of the house, not so much.
Done all tasks 8-15! 🙂
Done. 🙂
Done all tasks 8-15! Woot! =)