Get Your Desk Organized (Part 2)

In the last post, we focused on emptying that messy desk. If you missed that one, I would suggest reading it first and then returning here.

Today, we look at how to put everything back together, only much better organized than before. While the desk is empty and at its lightest, decide if its location is the best location. For the classroom teacher, I recommend locating the desk in the back of the room. For those times when you are seated at the desk while students are engaged in activities at their desks, you want to be located where you can see them easily, yet they do not see exactly where or when you may be looking. For those in an office, determine if a better arrangement of the furniture would yield better results.

When you get rid of the junk and relocate extra office supplies, you will be amazed at how much room you actually have in your desk and how good it can look. Do you have to roll your chair several feet, or even move to another part of the room, to work at your computer? I prefer an L-shaped work space. Something as simple as a small folding table can be placed at a right angle to the desk. The keyboard, computer, and telephone go there. With a swivel of the chair, you can work on the surface of the desk or on your computer. The extra surface for holding the computer equipment and telephone allows your desktop to be clean. On my desk at any one time, you will find decoration and whatever project I am working on right now. That's it.

Now Let's Load That Desk
Secure a drawer organizer for the lap drawer. A handful of rubber bands, paper clips, and binder clips go into the appropriate compartments. Several pencils, pens, and highlighters will find homes in the organizer. A ruler, letter opener, and small magnifying glass should fit nicely.

A file drawer will house your tickler files. If the drawer is not already fitted will rails for hanging files, purchase a system from an office supply store. Depending on the amount of papers you have in your life, you may require two hanging files drawers for your tickler files. Proper use of the tickler files eliminates paper from the desktop and the temptation to stash it in other desk drawers.

Select another file drawer for your stapler, tape dispenser, scissors, labeler, hole punch, and other small equipment. The back of this drawer could hold several dozen envelopes and some note cards. If you find you have two tape dispensers holding the same kind of tape or two staplers, move one of them out of your desk and to the area where you are keeping extra office supplies.

Where is your printer located? Keep a partial ream of paper nearby to refill it, but avoid allowing a desk drawer to store copy paper. The length and width cause even a small stack of paper to take up a majority of the space in the drawer. Likewise, extra folders are better stored in a fillng cabinet drawer. If you must store a few in your desk, store them vertically in the back of your tickler file drawer instead of laying them flat where you will invariably stack other things on top of them and have to pull those files from under other items.

Can You Keep It That Way?
When you get rid of the junk and relocate extra office supplies, you will be amazed at how much room you actually have in your desk and how good it can look. The challenge is to keep it that way. For years, your habit has probably been to use those desk drawers for whatever needed a home. It was so quick and easy to open a drawer and toss into it any sort of miscellaneous item. It's out of sight and out of mine. The problem is that, over time, the results of that habit grow. Put an end to that habit today.

If it doesn't have a home, the physical inbox is its home. That is the one place where incoming items go, and later, decisions are made about them. That's what happens with the mail each day. That's also what needs to happen with anything else for which a proper home is not evident. Put it in the inbox. Later in the day, clear the inbox, making thoughtful decisions about where its contents should go.

 You spend a great deal of time at your desk. Why not make it a comfortable place which works for you?

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Get Your Desk Organized

I talk a great deal about keeping a clean desk. Generally, I am referring to the surface of the desk, and that is generally the message people want to hear. A clean desktop eliminates the time spent looking for things. It prevents distractions and allows you to focus on the task at hand. In addition, the desktop is visible to others.

This post addresses the inside of the desk. While its contents are hidden from others, clutter there results in wasted time trying to find supplies, tools, and papers. Organizing the inside of the desk is just as important as clearing the surface.

What's in Those Desk Drawers?
Open the typical lap drawer and you find pencils with dull points, pencils with broken points, pens whose ink dried years ago, miscellaneous packets of sweetener and ketchup, and scores of pads of sticky notes. Open another drawer to find two staplers: the one that works and the one that is either jammed or out of staples.

Open another drawer and you find a partially-used ream of paper with a dog-eared corner on the entire stack, low-priority mail from last month, and a couple of used Styrofoam coffee cups that never made it to the trash. Another drawer holds an assortment of CD-ROMs (unlabeled), floppy disks (both 3 1/2 inch and 5 1/4 inch, also unlabeled), and miscellaneous flash drives.

A little planning on the front end will keep the now-empty drawers from becoming cluttered again. Those with a clean desktop can sometimes be the worst offenders when it comes to cluttered desk drawers. All of the unfinished work which would have been stacked on the desk has been shoved into drawers. That desk becomes the Bermuda Triangle of the office. What gets put in one of those drawers is never seen again.

Clean It Out 
The first step to an organized desk is to empty it totally. Trying to organize one drawer at a time usually results in junk simply being shifted around to other drawers. Empty the entire desk. Don't be surprised if its contents cover the floor. To clean up the mess, first you have to make the mess.

While the desk drawers are empty, take the time to thoroughly clean them. There is no better time than now to take a damp cloth to that accumulation of dust and the mess from the leaky packet of soy sauce. While you are at it, scrape all the bits of tape that used to hold notes to remind you of something that you probably never saw at the appropriate time anyway. Fingernail polish remover does a fantastic job of removing the sticky residue. As a finishing touch, figure out just why it is that one drawer does not operate freely, and fix the problem. Your desk is where you spend a significant part of your workday, and little hindrances which persist every day are just like the pebble in the shoe during a five-mile hike.

Make a Plan
A little planning on the front end will keep the now-empty drawers from becoming cluttered again. The most basic principle is that the desk is not a storage closet. It is a place which holds what you need on a daily basis. The desk is a place for a handful of paperclips and rubber bands, not several boxes of either one. The desk is a place for a few sharpened pencils and a few pens, not a place for every pencil and pen in the office. It's a place for a memo pad, not a dozen memo pads.

Before putting anything back in the desk, find a place to store extra office supplies. A shelf in a nearby closet or empty filing cabinet drawer can serve this function well. The box of staples, packs of Post-it notes, reams of paper, rolls of Scotch tape, and boxes of file folders, rubber bands, and paper clips will all find homes there rather than in your desk. When you need more paper clips, you will know where to get them.

Here is one common scenario: You go to a conference and return with the obligatory conference bag containing pads of Post-it notes, pencils, and pens imprinted with the names of exhibitors. Where do you put that sort of thing? If you throw them in desk drawers, you add to the collection of half-used memo pads and the problem of a lap drawer already overflowing with writing utensils. Put the new supplies in the supply area, not in the desk.

If this article motivates you to do something with your desk, clip this article. Next week, we will look at how to put it all back together.

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Identify a "Bulk" Area

What in the world is this? Is this the most recent version of these policies? Do I really need to keep this?

This summer, many teachers and administrators will undertake new positions. One of the first orders of business will be cleaning out and organizing the space left by the one who left the job. My experience has been that those on the way out are not nearly as conscientious about having everything neat and organized as the person coming in.

As you organize, anything you pick up will fall into one of two categories: 1) you need it; or 2) you don't. You toss the junk and organize the treasure. The only problem is that in those early days in a new job, it's hard to tell which is which. As a result, too many people hang onto it all and wonder why they can never find anything amid the clutter.

I held 5 different positions during my career in education, and in each case found myself asking questions about material I would run across. Time tends to answer those questions. The manual about which we have no clue today turns into the manual we will be looking for a week from now. We come across a box of keys and nobody has any idea what locks they fit. A month later, we encounter that locked storage room for which there seems to be no key, and find a match in that box of orphaned keys.

My answer to sorting out the mystery was to establish a "bulk" area in my office. It was the one area where I could toss any questionable item until a better decision could be may about whether to keep it or trash it, and if the answer was "keep it," exactly where to put it. The decisions are small ones, but they are decisions which must be made. As a principal, I had a large storage closet in my office. One shelf was designated as the "bulk" shelf. Those large items whose purpose was unknown went there. As a central office administrator, one cabinet in a built-in bookshelf served the purpose of holding those bulk items.

On my repeating task list, I added an item which simply said "Check Bulk," and set it to repeat every week. Seeing that task on the list was my trigger to examine that special shelf or cabinet. With each passing week, I gained a better understanding of what was trash and what was treasure. Each week, the "bulk" area grew smaller as some items were discarded and others were organized in their proper places. Do you really want boxes sitting in a corner of your office?

The day the bulk area was totally clear was a major step forward. It was a sign that there was "a place for everything and everything in its place," as Benjamin Franklin said. It was also a sign that the junk was gone and not taking up valuable real estate in an office or classroom.

Once the clutter is gone, that bulk area takes on a new and useful purpose: A microscope needs repair and you plan to deliver it to the proper person on Friday. Where do you put it from now until that time? You have a box of books to donate to charity and plan to take them on Tuesday of next week. What happens to that box of books until then? A new box of books arrives. What do you do with it until the books are distributed to the proper place?

For each of these examples, a designated spot for bulk items needing some type of attention provides an answer. To make this bulk holding area work, two factors must be in place:

1. The designated shelf or cabinet can only be used for bulk items needing some type of action. Do not let that spot also accommodate items which are to be stored there permanently. If used properly, that bulk storage spot will spend the majority of its time empty. 
2. Some trigger must be present which sends you to that bulk storage spot. Putting a reminder on the to-do list for the appropriate day to deliver the books, take the microscope for repair, delivery the books to charity, or unbox the newly-arrived set of books will prevent those bulk items from being forgotten. 

Whether you are new to the position or simply want to turn over a new leaf and move from a state of chaos to the freedom of order, creating a system which provides a place for every item is a tremendous first step. You will have an environment free of clutter. You will be able to put your hands on anything without the need to “hunt.” The time invested in creating the system translates into time saved each and every day.