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.