Peace of Mind Organizing

Eliminating the extraneous

18 February 2013

I recently signed up for the fabulous Workspace and Studio Redesign program offered by Jen Hofmann of Inspired Home Office.

In the eight years since I last rearranged the furniture in my home office, I’ve spruced it up a couple of times (with the help of friends), but I’ve been feeling like I’d like to change it up a bit more. When I read about this program, I hopped on board.

Jen and I had our first session last week and she helped me realize that I have a lot of extraneous stuff in my office. While I had worked on clearing out and organizing the two closets in my office, I hadn’t done a thing about my desk, which was starting to close in on me. Stuff was there by default.

(Incidentally, I think one of the reasons I’ve been having trouble keeping up my clean desk habit is that so many things actually were residing on my desk that the clear space felt like it was shrinking.)

My assignment from Jen was to touch everything on my desk, as well as the stuff I can see while I’m working, and evaluate it based on the question, Does this represent who I am and where I’m going?

On Saturday, I got to work and it was absolutely liberating! I have a teak desk organizer that we bought in the early 90s. It’s been on various desks in the house, and on this desk in particular since at least 2001. I realized in talking with Jen that there were only about four things in it that I actually used on a regular basis.

So I took it off my desk. Now my desk contains only the essentials. I did keep a little decorative dish that contains sea glass I picked up on my trip to Barbados in November. And I added a felted-wool bowl I knit that at the moment contains my Valentine’s candy. Those two things make me happy.

Here’s a set of before and after photos.

Talk about more visual peace! As you can see, I also cleared off much of the stuff on the bulletin board above my desk, though I haven’t exactly artfully arranged it.

There will be more evolution (I have two more sessions with Jen), but I had just to share the progress I made in a just a couple of hours on Saturday.

It’s been amazingly easy to keep my desk clear since then. (I’m so motivated!) In the morning, my uncluttered desk greets me with open arms.

Tagged with: clean desk, clutter clearing, declutter, decluttering, desk, home office, jennifer hofmann

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