I work at home so my office tends to get cluttered and messy. I have piles of paper here, stacks of books there, file folders all over. I also share the office with my husband and son so before I sit down to work I have to clear off a Bionicle, some kid scissors, my husband’s school papers, and a box of crayons. And it’s a super small room, about 9 x 10. A u-shaped desk lines the three sides of wall and an antique desk and bookcase takes up the fourth wall. This latter I have designated for my son’s use because it keeps him out of the main work area. Yes, it’s an antique and he bangs it up and draws on the writing surface, but it’s a small price to pay to keep him busy while I work. My office is also where I work on hobbies, so there are stacks of genealogy materials, jewelry making supplies, miscellaneous stuff I want to sell on eBay, 5 boxes of slides that I need to weed through, and notebooks for the charity work I do. All in all, it’s a very full room.

Lately, since we’ve put our house up for sale and it needs to look tidy for potential buyers, I’ve been on a decluttering binge. I’ve been going through every drawer, nook, and cranny in the office and chucking things mercilessly.

First up, I took a look at all the media I have around the office. I immediately threw out all my floppy disks. You should, too! Seriously, just dump these. Nobody uses these anymore. New computers don’t even have floppy drives. Then I decided to throw out my zip disks. This was a little more difficult because I was quite enamored of zip disks and I used them for many years for backups. The pain of throwing these out was similar to the agony I felt when converting to table-less CSS web design. Well, I got through that, I figured I could manage without my zip disks. It helped that the only zip drive I had left was broken a few years ago by my son shoving random objects into it. So into the trash they went. I’m pretty sure I won’t miss them. New computers don’t come with zip drives any more. These days everyone uses USB drives which are small, portable, and hold more stuff.

I have a lot of files backed up on CD’s. Most of these are of old family photos that I have scanned. I copy the high resolution, scanned photos to a disk and then keep a smaller sized copy on my hard drive to refer to. If for some reason I ever need the larger version, I can pull that CD and copy it off. Of course, I organize all my family photos in a database so it’s easy to locate them when the time comes. One thing I could do to free up more space is to copy all the CD’s onto DVD’s, which hold much more data. I might do this someday. Eventually, CD’s and DVD’s will no longer be used for data storage so I’ll need to convert to whatever the newest technology is. One thing I might do is invest in a media hub which will store all my photos, videos, and music. Of course, this means another piece of equipment sitting on my desk, but if I could eliminate all those hard copies of CD’s it might be worth it. I use mozy.com to automatically back up all the files on my three computers. It costs a small fee every month to do this but it’s priceless to have this done automatically. No more backing up files at the end of the day. No more stacks of CD’s, floppies, USB drives, and zip disks cluttering up my life. I highly recommend Mozy or another back up utility for everyone.

I discovered I had pens in four places in my office. This was no good. I found a large wicker bin and dumped all the pens and pencils into the bin. I’d like to throw out all the ball points and weird pens I never use but I haven’t done this yet. My husband uses ball points and my son uses pencils so I might have to keep them.

I had a cool Kleenex box that I emptied of tissues and tossed in miscellaneous scraps of paper like people’s addresses, little to do notes, plant ID tags, etc. Most of the scraps were no longer pertinent to my current life so I copied the data I wanted to keep into my address book and threw everything else into the trash, including the tissue box. It was really hard throwing away that tissue box. It was one of those really pretty ones with a cool design on it.

I used to keep scraps of paper all over the house with notes to myself about various projects, phone calls from clients, etc. I eliminated all this paper by buying spiral bound notebooks in different sizes and copying the info down into them. I keep one in my purse for to do lists, two on my desk for the businesses that I run, and one for blogging ideas. When we were remodeling our house, I set up an organizer that zipped shut for all those pamphlets, invoices, and receipts. Once a project was done, I transferred the necessary materials to our house binder for the next resident. At this point, I’m confident that I’ve conquered the scraps of paper disease.

I found a box in my closet labeled “Entertainment Software” full of old computer games, an encyclopedia, a German language learning CD, and a “Diagnose Your Auto Trouble” CD. I put all this junk in the Goodwill bin. Then I took the boxes of the games my husband currently plays down from the shelf where they were hogging up space and removed the CD’s and manuals from the boxes, which I threw away. I put the CD’s and manuals into the pretty storage box and stuck it back up on the shelf. It looks much better than a shelf of miscellaneous software boxes.

Lastly, I took a hard look around and got rid of all those little tchotchkes that I keep around the office. The vase with dried flowers that is nothing more than a dust magnet, the little crafts projects my son brings home from school, the paper organizers, etc. All were thrown away or put elsewhere.

I have to say, even with all this work, the office is still pretty full of stuff. The closet is a bit more empty so I’m going to work on filling that back up with some stuff from the office. My file cabinets are also a bit more empty because I’ve been on a paperless kick for some time now. I still have some things I’d like to work on: the genealogy piles, the old slides, the music CD’s, and all my notes from design school. But I’ve made a great start and coming into the office is a little more fun now.

I’d love to hear from readers what tips you’ve used to keep your office space uncluttered. Please comment below so we can all help each other have a well-functioning space for office work and more.

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