Moving Monday: Tackling the Desk

Two weeks ago, I made a pledge to myself to choose one area of my house to clean/organize/dejunk. I started by making some changes to our laundry system (aka, the pile of dirty clothes in my master closet). Then, my plans got a little derailed by the addition of an Amazon Kindle to my life. I've decided that I'm going to have to reward myself with reading time after I accomplish the important tasks ahead of me. Lately, I've been tackling my desk.

My desk has always been a struggle for me to keep clean and organized. I have a tendency to pile things until my desk looks as if it is home to the leaning tower of Pisa. Its nearly constant state of disorganization is something that I know drives my husband nuts. Once I became a stay-at-home-mom, I tried to organize it. I bought a spiffy red leather-like desktop organizer with a little drawer. It was cute...but it was for horizontal storage. Houseworks clued me into the beauty of vertical, rather than horizontal, desk storage. So, as cute as the organizer was, it just wasn't effective for me. Since my desk doesn't have a file drawer, I needed a desktop file. I picked up a Snap-N-Store Desktop File and matching magazine file from Staples.

To help organize my space, I:

• Created new file folders: I went through the stacks of paper on my desk and made new file folders for the types of items that I wanted to keep on my desk. I used my spiffy Brother Label Maker to make neat file labels and satisfy the perfectionist in me. Now that it is clear where things go on my desk, I won't have to hunt for stamps or bills and neither will my husband.
• Cleared out the desk drawers of non-essentials: Awhile ago, I thought it was a great idea to store some craft materials in one of my three small desk drawers. Guess what? Not a good idea. I don't craft at my desk, so they were really just taking up precious desk real estate. So, out they went and into the craft cupboard. Instead I've filled the drawers with necessities like envelopes, pens, notepads, etc. Now I won't be frustrated when I try to mail a bill and can't find an envelope.
• Cleared the desktop of non-essentials: Somehow if something doesn't have a home, it ends up on my desktop. So, our Flip Video Camera and Canon Powershot Digital Elph camera have resided there. Once I cleared out the drawers of the unnecessary, I found our electronics a new home in one of the drawers. Hallelujah!
• Cleaned out the pen cup: My pen cup somehow always manages to fill with pens that don't work and pencils that aren't sharpened. So, I filled it with pens that work and mechanical pencils.

My, oh my, does it feel good to have an organized desk! I just might reward myself with a book on my Kindle.