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- School or college notes and texts – unless you just graduated they’re likely to be out of date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- Outdated printers, scanners, fax machines (check for disposal info with your local council)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]
done
Completed!!
Done!! Still needs some work…but made some headway!!
Done.
office done
Completed this yesterday, but forgot to post! OOps! 🙂
Done 🙂
Done!
I spent an hour on the task — much better but need more time. Yard work to do today, thend I’ll tackle more paperwork.
This one was way hard! Our home office is also our business office and so needs much more than 5 minutes but I accepted the challenge and spent 10 minutes sorting out the stationary cupboard 🙂
Done – easy one – my home office is a computer desk in the lounge room
Done
Another ongoing chore, but got 5 min worth done today.
Done.
Spent my time on my home desk and on my office cubicle at work. Got rid of stacks of paperwork at work and finished filing away a number of student records that have been on my desk for months! At home, I was able to straighten the area up and gather supplies that I usually need and that are never there- I have plenty..because I LOVE office supplies : ) ! They’ve been scattered throughout the house…now I have them where I need them!
This one’s partially done – Ill need quite a bit more time to tame this home office.
Yay, I’ve done all my tasks this week!
I posted that this (and all tasks for the week) were done, but don’t see my post. 😉
Thanks!! 🙂
Day 15 done!!!!
A couple of months ago I took two days to get through all the computer bits that my partner had, that was in general piles in boxes. Put cables into see-through bedding bags. Put goes- together stuff into sandwich bags. So in this quick start I took the old mobile phones from the drawer and have them in my car to take to recycle. Although I have done all projects so far I have just got bits of them done. So in the coming months I will look back at your emails and do each one more thoroughly. Good to have a to-do list.
I enjoyed getting this done, Thanks