My desk is one place that makes me crazy quite regularly. I clean it up and within a very short amount of time, it's a disaster area again. This has been an ongoing issue for the past four years and I'm rather tired of it.
But sometimes when you have a particular frustration, you have to dig a little deeper and figure out where the real problem lies. That's exactly what I did recently with my desk. When we moved into this house, I had originally intended for this to be a second scrapbooking area in our spare room which could used by my dear friend, Lucy, as we crop together often. It also became a handy place to put my printer and use the laptop. But what never occurred to me was that the desk drawers were all full of scrapbooking and rubber stamping supplies. I mean, I knew they were there, but I didn't consider what was in the drawer space when the top of the desk was a chaotic mess.
It turns out that there has never been any scrapbooking happen at this desk. Instead, it's the place where I work on school plans, pay bills, edit photos, and work on business plans. So whenever I have paperwork, bills, receipts, and other such desk-y things, there is nowhere to put them away, as the drawers are already full of unrelated stuff.
So I emptied out every single drawer (there's a LOT of drawer space here!) and purged quite a bit of the cardstock (I had a LOT). I shared it with other homeschool moms; a total win-win situation. The rest of it has been moved to the other side of the room where the scrapbook bench and supplies live. Naturally, this freed up space for the things I actually DO at this desk! What a concept!
The other thing that has been a huge lifesaver (indirectly) is the pain in my neck, shoulder, arm, and hand. It led me to realize (courtesy of my amazing chiropractor) that working on a laptop is ergonomically horrible. Particularly given my upper right appendage issues. So I bought a wire shelf upon which sits my laptop. And I purchased a wireless keyboard (which I love!) and mouse. These items have significantly improved my ergonomicness and also provide me with more desktop space since the keyboard lives under the shelf. Another win-win!
{Randomness: Now that I'm used to shooting with an 18mp camera, going back to 5mp is incredibly grainy}
My desk has actually remained fairly tidy for the past couple of weeks now! That's a record for me. When I need to put paperwork away, it has a place to go. When I'm in need of something, I can find it without utilizing the Pile System. I really like this being organized stuff.
