Organizing your desk and keeping it organized is something we all deal with. Here are some ideas for how to organize your desk, and common areas that people struggle with.
Go through the mail daily. The biggest hurdle to an organized desk is controlling what comes to it each day. Whether it’s mail, bills, papers from kids, school, or others, the faster you can make decisions about what comes to your desk, the easier it will be. Whether you like to file papers right away or have a ‘To Be Filed’ folder is up to you, just be consistent. It’s easier to keep up than to catch up.
Remember: You need less than you think you do.
How can you limit what comes to your desk? Bills can be set to auto-pay and emailed to your inbox. Magazine subscriptions can be canceled. Papers about events you want to attend can be added to your calendar immediately with all the pertinent info. The fewer times you handle a piece of paper the better. Deciding ahead of time what you keep will help avoid decision fatigue.
Donations to Charities
There are many wonderful organizations that ask for donations at any particular time (and sometimes over and over). My advice is to pick two or three (you decide) organizations to donate to. You can also decide ahead of time how much money to donate to each one. Once you’ve decided you don’t need to make that decision again. You know you donate X amount of money to X, Y, & Z charity and you ignore all the rest.
Set Your Space Up for Success
Keep a trash can, shredder, or recycling container right by your workspace. You want to do everything you can to make it easy to take care of the papers in your space with the least possible effort on your part. If you have lots of files keep them close to your workspace to encourage orderliness.
Regular Maintenance is Key
Pick one day a week to have your desk cleared off or tidied by. Whether you want your desk tidied by the end of the day or by the end of the week is up to you. Having a deadline will help you make decisions that you’ve been delaying. It’s also good to have a time (maybe in January, maybe after you get your tax return) to go through old files and shred anything that is no longer relevant. Time & distance can make some decisions easier to make.
Make Your Space Beautiful
Beauty, not clutter, fosters creativity: If you make your space beautiful, you’re more likely to want to keep it that way. I know some people are visual and need to keep current projects visible or they get lost in the shuffle. That doesn’t mean you have to have them all over your desk. You can still have some sort of inbox or system to keep current projects visible and beautiful.
Change your Desk
Might need to change your desk out for a smaller desk: if you have fewer places to shove things, it forces you to actually deal with them. People are kind of like goldfish in this respect. We grow to fit the size of our bowls. If you have a big desk with lots of cupboards and drawers you’ll end up filling them all. You might try downsizing your desk to a more minimal look. This will encourage you to prioritize what you keep to only the most important stuff.
Going Through Old Papers
When you’re going through a backlog of papers, it helps to set your vision ahead of time and states how much space you want to use. “I want to only have the papers that will fit in …” Decide what kind of papers you need to save, “I will only keep papers that are (make a list of the types of papers you will keep.)”
This process can take a while. Set manageable goals for yourself. “I will go through 15 papers every day.” Or “I will only have papers on my desk, no more piles.” “I will go through one old file each week” “I will work for 15 minutes on editing papers every day before I have lunch.”
Whatever you decide, try to stick with it. That’s how you build momentum and take small bites on a big project. If you’re struggling to maintain what you’ve decided, try another strategy. Maybe an accountability partner will help. Maybe a deadline. The goal is to get the project finished and it doesn’t really matter how you accomplish that.
What do you do to keep your desk organized? How have you managed to deal with all the papers that accumulate? You can read more about organizing your office by reading Organizing Your Home Office, Declutter Last Year’s Financial Papers, and How Much Paper Should You Save?
If you want one-on-one help organizing a space, call Colleen at 208.736.3306 for a free consultation. I’d love to help you on your organizational journey. Virtual options are also available.