Minimizing Clutter in Your Office

Minimizing Clutter in Your Office

1. Take control of surfaces first. In most cluttered offices, flat surfaces are magnets for clutter. If you don’t know what to do with a piece of paper when it comes into your office it gets laid aside, then buried, then picked up, re-looked at, and then put back on - you guessed it - a flat surface. The fix: attack one flat surface at a time. Sort through all your papers and put them into piles or boxes for action, reference, file, garbage and shred. Don’t spend a lot of time on the sort - just do it. **One hint on bills and other maybe-important things-if there is anything that is accessible online (credit card statements for instance... once reviewed) you probably don’t need to keep a paper copy. The IRS website lists items you need to keep for taxes, that is a good rule of thumb. It is less than you probably think.

2. Think vertically and furniture as storage. If your home office is small and you do not have a file cabinet, consider having stackable boxes or crates and shelves or hangers mounted to the wall. In the end of the day, you want to have a clean, simple office, and keep just the papers you need to have. If you can’t get rid of everything, then think about how to have storage where the papers can be basically hidden from everyday view.

3. Place a recycle bin close to your mailbox and get rid of everything you do not really want right away. When I started going through the stacks of paper in my office I kept coming on old ads, old bills and statements, and most of this never needed to be kept. Get rid of it before it becomes a problem.

4. Decide up front what your office is really for and make decisions based on this purpose. Your office is not the place to store extra towels, games, toys, or discarded clothes. Just dropping things in the office because you are tired of carrying them around is the road to clutter. The key here is to think not of straightening up or of organizing, but of purpose and minimizing. Getting really clear about what a space if for helps you get it and keep it the way that you really want. .

How to Minimize When Injured

Question: What does a Minimalist in Training do when slightly injured (see previous post on my back tweak) but still wants to minimize the messy kitchen cabinets?

**Below is the coffee and tea cabinet...

Answer: Give your significant other wine...

And put them to work clearing cabinets...

As before, decide what the space is really for, take everything out, clean the space, and only place back the items that should be there. Everything else either goes in storage or is sent packing. St. Vincent DePaul charity is getting a box of coffee mugs in this case, and tea and coffee that is not in current use is in storage in the pantry.

And this is what the tea and coffee side of the cabinet looks like now...

This made the cabinets much more usable. You will also note there is a jumble of items on the top of the cabinets that need to be dealt with (crock pot, chopper, cereal), but by this point my faithful assistant had downed two glasses of wine and I didn't think suggesting she get up on a ladder or chair was a good idea.

She is cute, though, and totally with me on the whole minimizing and simplifying path.

The Result of the Run

Not exactly a minimalist post, unless minimal common sense counts. That said, I figured people want to know what the result of the previous post was.

Contrary to common sense I decided to run Steep Ravine this morning with www.coastaltrailruns.com. Thanks to Charles A Ceasar II (he is the one doing the knocking out) for advising me on how to treat a tweaked back. Still, up through the first mile in the seven mile course I considered dropping out. But after the 4 mile climb to the aid station I was feeling better and my son Adam was waiting for me there (he was 5 minutes ahead of me at that point).

With Adam's encouragement I kept on going and felt better and better on the downhills. Amazingly, I won my age division, and Adam, although he graciously waited for his dad till I at least got got going again (then he left me in the dust) got 2nd place in his age division. Kate was not too far behind me, but she is in the toughest age group for women runners.

Jared was waiting for us at t he finish, and Kate took the picture.

Next up on the minimzing journey... the kitchen cabinets.

P.S. Charles said I earned "warrior status" by running with a messed up back and still winning. I am not sure my lovely wife agrees. :)

Yoga, Not Running, and Lessons for a Minimalist

This is a great one for those of you looking for something to mock. I'm not sure what this has to do with becoming a minimalist, but I will try and figure that out as I go along.

Besides trying to minimize my life, I am trying to be fit and healthy. As such, I have developed a love for trail running. That's minimal fitness, right? You just need a trail. In fact, I run in New Balance Minimus trail shoes, and love the whole minimal/barefoot movement in running.

Which brings me to what happened this morning...

For a few weeks now I have been increasing my trail running pace to get ready for the Coastal Trail Runs race tomorrow at Stinson Beach. The race is called Steep Ravine and has 1,800 feet elevation gain the first three miles, followed by four miles of downhill back to the beach.

I was all set, feeling great after my last training run yesterday. So today, Kate and I went to a "gentle yoga class" she'd bought through Groupon. About five minutes into the class I feel some pain in my lower back so I did what any other guy would do...tough it out till the hour long class was over. Now, I can't stand up straight and may not be able to run tomorrow. Ah the vanity of dudeness. Three weeks of hard training probably down the tube because I don't want to quit a yoga class early. Ridiculous.

So, as a wannabe minimalist, I have to wonder, was this the universe telling me to let go of my need to achieve in races? Or was it just forgetting that as an older guy, just because you can go run a few miles, does not mean that other muscles and joints are not out of shape?

I guess this is the lesson: Just because you can do one thing fairly well, it doesn't mean that it will translate to another thing or activity.

If you want to run well, you have to run. If you want to do yoga well, you have to do yoga. If you want to learn to minimize the stuff in your life, well, you have to practice the skill of minimizing.

There, I managed to bring the blog back to minimizing, although all I am currently doing is sitting in a chair with a hot rice pack on my lower back and feeling like an idiot.

A Minimalist Date

No plan
Go
to old town
Petaluma (Petting-Luma)

with your wife of 3 months

Sit on a bench
outside
while her hair
is cut
Wander the streets

and bookstores

Listen to banjo playing troubadours

And find a small, empty Italian restaurant

Simply spend time

with someone you love

Talking

About Murakami

and Vonnegut

Come home

Smiling

: )

Minimizing the tragedy that is my closet

My closet is not exactly a tragedy, but it is filled with things I just do not wear. Since I mostly work from home there are suits and dress shirts I don't use any longer, things that don't fit, and some stuff that I only pull off the hanger when I've been too lazy to do laundry. Okay, so lets attack the closet with the same procedure as before...

First, decide what the closet is really for. Um, how about holding items of clothing that I actually like and wear, not just stuff I might wear or fit back into one of these days. And also, if I fit in something but just don't like wearing it, it doesn't need to be there.

Excellent. This is what the closet looks like before the minimize...

You will note that I am judiciously ONLY showing my, um, half of the closet.

This is all the stuff that came out of my half of the closet out on the bed...

After going through everything and making a fast judgement on a) does it fit, b) do I like it, and c) do I actually wear it, just the things that hit all the preceding criteria went back in the closet. This is the end result...

Pretty nice minimize, if I do say so myself. I kept my suit, two blazers, a few dress shirts, and the polo shirts that fit and look the best. I also retained all my ties, belts. A hand-knit sweater my wife gave me is on the top shelf.

The best thing is that the items left in the closet are the pieces of my wardrobe I actually wear and now they are not stuffed in with a bunch of things that never see the light of day.

More room for the good stuff, eh?

Book Giveaway - The Power of Less by Leo Babauta

The drawing was made with the assistance of the random number generator at www.random.org. for my hardcover edition of The Power Less.

An email is out to the winner to make sure they want the book before it is sent. If the winner of the drawing does not want the book I will make a second drawing and send out an email. I want to make sure I am not needlessly adding to another persons clutter.

It is a great book, though, and if you've not read it I highly recommend it. ~Rocky