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- School or college notes and texts – unless you just graduated they’re likely to be out of date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- Outdated printers, scanners, fax machines (check for disposal info with your local council)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]
Maaaan, we got a lot of these. But we cleaned today. 🙂
DONE!
Homeschooling 5 kids creates a LOT of paperwork!
Kids all helped out & they liked the changes too.
(cleared off a couple shelves so they would have a place to put their daily books instead of stacking on the end table.) 🙂
Thanks so much for the challenge!
I’ve done ALL for the week. YEEEE HAW !!
… and I feel goooooooooooood!!
It seems so much easier when I say .. “today’s 30 day challenge is …”
heehee. Then it’s coming from YOU and not ME. :$
This was done recently, so it didn’t take long to tidy it up and put things to rights.
I’ve definitely put the time in today and notice a really big difference. It’s not finished, but somehow that’s finally okay! I am making progress at not expecting perfection…thank you!!
I’ve been with y’all every step of the way, so far, and I am so proud of all of us!!
Well, done my 5 minutes and it made a nice difference. Could dedicate more time, but my special needs daughter, was in need today. (0=
Done! ok this one needed extra attention, finally getting it done it nice though. Done all the tasks so far and boy let me tell you it really does change my day to day outlook on organizing, I’ve noticed that I’ve been better at STAYING organized from doing these simple and easy tasks.
well this one is going to take a little more then 5 min. will work on this again tomorrow too!
DONE! took a little while but its so worth it 🙂
I love to shred paper, so this task might actually be fun.
done, but more to do… this is starting to get harder! What happened to clean out the utensil drawer??? 🙂
I don’t have space for a home office, my desk doubles as a office desk, sewing desk and computer desk, so office items are located in various drawers and shelves throughout the house. This task will take a little longer than 5 minutes, but the desk is now tidy.
Done…well, there isn’t that much clutter yet other than the papers, but I’m finally going to get rid of a printer I don’t have a cable for and probably never will. And buy that crucial file cabinet!
This is the most chaotic room in our house. It’s a bit better but far from perfect!
Done – what a challenge! I’m sitting down with a much-needed coffee to recover. I had to go in the filing cabinet to get out and throw old Christmas cards, and go through the drawers and cupboard to get rid of a lot of ‘stuff’. I’m saving the reading piles for this afternoon! Still that’s 15 challenges completed.
Finished tasks 8-15! Halfway there and I’m feeling much better about my home (and car)! Thank you!
I spent my five minutes getting rid of excess stationery. Free pens, markers that don’t go, staplers without staples, and really a few duplicates that I’ll give to my son’s teacher for the classroom.
At least someone will use all that stuff.
This one has been staring me in the face for a LONG time. Took today to get the whole craft/crap area cleaned out. It took me the entire day, but it’s done.
We just moved my “office” from one room to another so this task is already accomplished. Thank goodness, there’s nothing like a nice clutter-free workspace.
Well our office is also my craft, sewing, etc. room so we’ve made progress but this task is going to take a few days to finish!
Done…..just had to tidy things up.