My Future Self: Home Office Excavation: Week 9

Well, this is it! My work is not yet done; but what is left is the off camera sorting of bins. For the next 6-8 weeks, I will continue to further sort and disposition the remains of the Great 48 and; then move on to sort bins that are in a storage locker. One of the interesting things about this process has been how it carries over into other parts of the house, car and office. I find myself taking care of the little things now before they snowball or create avalanches!

Today's post is about some of the little things that have helped in the process of de-cluttering and organizing my spaces. The first one has to do with "going"paperless" or at the very least limiting the paper that that circulates in my environment. We've already talked about Paper Demons; but this is about saving documents that you don't necessarily have room for. I decided against desk drawers and file cabinets in my home office for the simple reason I tend to use them to hide things. Out of sight, out of mind! Also, there really isn't room to archive everything I want to keep; so I've been scanning certain documents, storing them on a thumb drive and on a cloud. The most important papers go on a Swiss Army flash drive so that in case of an emergency, it's all there in the kit.

One of the things I picked up at IKEA a couple of weeks ago was a Bärbar tray (pictured below, top left.) I placed it atop my non-fiction shelves and, use it to empty out my pockets (see below, top right.) This prevents stuff from going into the wash that should not... say like an iPhone (Did you know that an Otterbox will protect your iPhone from many things but it won't save your iPhone from drowning in the wash and rinse cycles of a Maytag?) Anyway, the tray has proven to be very handy in keeping track of things. I know where my keys, wallet and iPod are all the time now :-)

In the top right photo, you'll see a couple of other things that have been helpful in keeping my stuff together:

• The tin in the top left corner of the photo contains a lot of old marbles. It's pretty heavy and I use it as a book end for the row of audiobooks that sits across the top of my NF shelves;
• There are two watches (top left of the tray) one yellow and one black. One is set to standard time and the other to daylight savings time. Each cost less than $3.00 at Rite Aid. No more fussing with re-setting my watches or wondering if my time is correct! Even though I carry an iPhone which carries the correct time always, I've been in a situation or two where my iPhone was unavailable (see drowned iPhone incident above) and having a watch was very handy.
• The wallet (bottom right of the tray) was a gift from a friend who was sick and tired of me using a raggedy pink thing from Target. Unfortunately, as much as I love black, the wallet was always difficult to find when it slipped under the car seat or come other equally dark and mysterious place. So I got a little leopard print duct tape and slapped some on the wallet. Now the wallet has greater visibility and can no longer lurk in the shadows undetected.

• At my workstation I have a few items that need to recharge overnight. In the mornings, when I would pull whatever fully charged item(s) I needed, the cables had a propensity to slide behind my desk. There is a bulletin board over my desk, so I jury-rigged some hooks from tacks and they seem to be doing the trick! (see above, bottom left photo)
• As for all the writing implements and scissors and bookmarks and chopsticks that I own, I placed many of them in pen holders which were formerly cake frosting containers. The highlighters went into a wire penholder that actually couldn't hold anything else as everything else kept slipping through the openings :-/ Anyway, the four pen holders then got put on a 12" lazy susan which in turn got placed in one of the cubbies at my work station. The whole things saves space and keeps all that stuff convenient and organized!

Well, that's it folks! We've gone from a dark and dangerous place to a viable work space in two months! The things I've learned to do in the past few weeks have been helpful in other areas of my life and even though there won't be too much happening that's blog-worthy, the process continues off camera. In a couple of weeks I'll be returning to an IKEA to pick up an office chair; but if I happen across anything else helpful, I'll be sure to update!

See Also:

My Future Self: Home Office Excavation (Physical & Psychological Effects of Clutter)

My Future Self: Home Office Excavation: Week 2 (Light and Planning)

My Future Self: Home Office Excavation: Week 3 (Momentum)

My Future Self: Home Office Excavation: Week 4 (Paper Demons)

My Future Self: Home Office Excavation: Week 5 (Donations)

My Future Self: Home Office Excavation: Week 6 (Sharing Space)

My Future Self: Home Office Excavation: Week 7 (Letting Go: Pragmatism vs Sentimentality)

My Future Self: Home Office Excavation: Week 8 (Letting Go: Projects)