Thanks to an email from Thomas MacEntee, who is so organized he’s always on top of things like this, I learned that today has been named Organize Your Home Office Day.
In that email, Tom sent out a great list of resources for organizing your genealogy space. I am so grateful that Organize Your Family History is included on that list!
So, in honor of Organize Your Home Office Day, I challenge you today to look around your home office (genealogy or otherwise) and assess the following:
- Are there stray papers that could be filed?
- Do the items that are stored on your desk deserve to be there?
- Do you have post-its or notes pinned to a bulletin board that have aged out?
- How are you doing on office supplies? Are you about to run out of anything?
- Do you have any shredding to do?
- Can you put away items that belong in other rooms?
If you can say yes to any of those questions, I encourage you to pick three of them to address right now.
I’m convinced that most of these tidy-up type of projects take much less time than we expect them to. And they reap big benefits.
Two weeks ago, a TV reporter came to my home office to interview me for a story on paper clutter. (I’d post the link, except I haven’t found one yet.)
Looking at my office through his eyes, I saw all sorts of items that had made their way into the space that I’d barely even noticed. You can bet I put a little effort into tidying up my home office before he arrived. (I even bought some flowers!) That’s a picture of my desk that morning at the top of this post.
True confession: My desk looked great that day but as I look it this morning, two weeks later, it doesn’t look so great. As soon as I post this, I’m going to set a timer for 15 minutes and try to get it back into shape before the timer goes off. I think I’ll succeed. The place looked ship shape within ten minutes!
Even if you’re not reading this on March 14, I encourage you to do this assessment of your office and then take action for just a little while to address a few things on the list. Because really, every day can be Organize Your Home Office Day, can’t it?
Thanks to your blog post, I’m going to spend some time organizing my desk today. And thanks to me mentioning this to my wife, she’s going to spend some time organizing in her office this afternoon. That makes at least four (counting you and Mr MacEntee)! I like the way you think.
That’s great, Steve! Enjoy that organized desk. Thanks so much for commenting.
There is a Japanese concept which many companies use to help keep workspaces clear. It’s called 5S.
Sort: check through everything in your workspace. Either file, action or discard each item.
Set in order: Only have near to hand things that you use regularly, Anything that you do not use on a regular basis (ie daily or weekly) should be put away into a cupboard
Standardise: identify places for each type of item .Always return the item to its allocated spot. So for example decide where your envelopes will live or your sticky labels and only put them in that spot, nowhere else, That means you don’t waste time looking for them
Shine: Clean the space
Sustain: Take a photograph of your newly cleared space – put it within your eyeline. This is now your standard to maintain.Regularly audit your workspace to make sure you are keeping to your standard
thank you for reminding us Janine. I should really practice what I preach, but I have those days where I look around and am shocked at how not organized my desk looks. It is so easy to just “let it go” 🙂
You and me both, sister!