My Office Overhaul (Part 1)

I’ve been working on purging some things and organizing the house a bit more, now that I’m not working three+ jobs so I have a bit more free time on my hands to do home projects. Thought I’d share some progress — I am not even close to “done” nor do I suggest this is how anyone else needs to do things, but I know I like to get ideas from other folks, so figured I’d be transparent and share. If nothing else, this may make some of you feel better about your own progress!

This is a real house, where we do real living. No Pinterest fodder or magazine-worthy scenes here! I am a lot older these days (translation: not so much energy and my waning eyesight also means I sometimes don’t notice things) — so no judgment, please! Just wanted to give you a glimpse into my home — so….. welcome!

Let’s start in the office area.….

Things had gotten a bit out of hand. This was NOT my normal office look — it had been all tidy just a month earlier! But the holidays hit, and we were rearranging stuff all over the house and….. What is it with PAPER? Oh my goodness. And this room seemed to be the main floor “dumping ground” for stuff I said I’d eventually get to.

BEFORE……In my defense… again, this was not the “everyday” look but did include stuff we moved from another room to lay a rug, things we rearranged from somewhere else to start a purge elsewhere, packages waiting to ship, things to be donated, etc. But still…. not a pretty sight. Even my working counter was getting out of hand. I usually keep it decent for video conferencing, but when this was taken, we’d had houseguests in several rooms for almost a month, so things had accumulated.

I had to pack up books (I boxed up SIX bankers boxes of books  from this room — not counting what’s on those shelves!). Many things were donated to Blue Ridge Hospice, moved to their correct spots in the house, or trashed.  I lost track of how many trash bags Jim hauled out or boxes he broke down. (I love that man.)

The handyman put the leaning cabinet door back on the kitchen island where it belonged. (It had been knocked off in a cookie-decorating mishap. Don’t ask.)

AFTER…. Not perfect, but better! The sign and mug in the center of the counter are hidden by my body in a video conference and at the time, the mug held my charging cord (plug is behind that frame). Since then, I have moved the charging station to behind the printers, and I’ve purged the left side a bit more.

Today...not perfect (still a work in progress, but I’ve condensed, purged…..). It accumulated in layers and it’s leaving in layers….

The desk side of the office

BEFORE (I show these photos ONLY to give you hope. It pains me to publish these!) Again, it’s not usually like this, but the holidays (and about 15 houseguests) got the better of me.

So at this point below, I’d gotten a lot of it cleaned up, but still needed to re-visit my systems to get the desk clutter under control and get rid of some boxes and back-door clutter.

Desk side, AFTER:

Let’s check out the desk.

This is a working desk. I write books here, work 60+ hours a week from here, create ads and graphics, run Norwex and L’BRI parties, do interviews, record classes…..  I love this desk. My friend Sharon gave this to me about 30 years ago and I love the cubbies and the drawers and the pullouts. It just works for me . . .  when I maintain my systems!

BEFORE…..I am so embarrassed to show you the piles on my desk… oh, my!

I’m an out-of-sight, out-of-mind person, so if I’m working on a project, it stays spread out, then another one piles on top….. Not a good system. I used to have a better system, but life got hectic and the old system fell by the wayside. You can see on the screen, I’m watching get-it-together videos!

The desk side, AFTER... still have a ways to go and I know some of this is still probably just “clutter” — but it’s a huge improvement and gives me breathing space.

Some of the things I’ll still have to work on letting go of — it’s like peeling an onion, one layer at a time. (For example, the wooden sign hanging from the drawer knob was created with balsa wood and a red crayon by a 4-yo on the occasion of his moving 9 hours away from us–he told me he wrote his name on it, so I wouldn’t forget him. <sob> Sorry, Martha Stewart or Marie Kondo — the sign stays. I don’t care that the kid is 11 now.)I’ve kept the desk uncluttered for a month because of some paper management I put (back) into place. I had to ask myself: WHY is my desk a perpetual wreck? [Because it’s projects I’m working on or paperwork I need to file.] WHY does it all stay there? [Because if I put it away, I forget about it, or I have to pull all the parts together again to work on it, and that takes up my working energy.]

So I revived an old tickler file system I’d allowed to get overrun. (Note to self: It doesn’t work to put all the “stuff to still do” or “things to decide about” into the tickler file for the next week. That just clogs the tickler and renders it useless to me.)

First, I cleared off all the paper and categorized it. (One plus to waiting so long is that a lot of it could just be trashed or shredded!)

Next, I collected projects into bins and put them into the cubbies above my desk – this works better than files or binders for me, personally. I could just toss all the parts of a project into the bin. These bins have dry-erase labels on the front so I can just re-label easily when a project is finished. (Mine were clear acrylic for about $3 from Target’s “dollar section” but I’ve linked to something similar.) I got one larger bin to match, for the books related to one of the projects.

I cleaned up the tickler file a bit and added some files-I-grab-often to a convenient desk drawer: Then I worked on some of the drawers in the desk to make them more functional for me. I didn’t clean these up—just shoved some things in better and took a photo so, again, no judgment! hahaha

And long term files need some work (another project for another day– or a day at a time)…..

A long way to go on these shelves — including swapping out the sticky notes! — but this gave me a landing spot for the papers that often accumulate on the desk. By categorizing them, I am able to actually use them. These are the “ideas” sorts of papers that seemed to defy regular file categories and so got shuffled from place to place, or buried.

My visual “next steps” list

My final step this week was to reorganize my “context lists” on the stand on my desk — this is my running to-do list a la David Allen’s Getting Things Done.  I used 3inch memo cube paper for each category.

So there you have it — a very humbling confession of this beginning of my journey to get my house more organized so I can feel more peaceful and in control of my surroundings. So I can breathe.

The view from my office:

I’d love to hear about your organization journey!

A few resources you might like:

(These are affiliate links, so you pay the same price you would normally pay, but if you click through and purchase anything, I do earn a bit to keep posting fun content for you!)

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