BIG thanks go to:

Ann Espo at One Bag Nation shared practical ideas to give everything a place.

Vicky White at Life Design Strategies wrote how to Position Your Desk for Power.

Karen Henderson of Get Organized & More shared Feng Shui Tips that Energize Your Office.

Coach Alison Marks of Inside Out Design Coaching asked Is Your Workspace Working Against You?

Brandie Kajino, The Home Office Organizer wrote that Organization is a State of Mind.

Coach Maggie McCauley of A New View wrote about Filing with Ease.

Happy Monday!

Post from: My Organized Biz

I just read a great article from The Montreal Gazette that has some super solutions so the perfect work space doesn’t have to be such a head-scratcher. Check it out here.

Thanks to Thursday Bram for the tip!

Post from: My Organized Biz

Maybe you’re the kind of person for whom having books is really important and getting rid of them is almost painful. Or you might just have a lot of them by default and could be ready for a good purge.

My basic belief is that the books you surround yourself with need to represent who you are and where you’re going. If you have books that represent old parts of you or past careers that have fallen by the wayside, these can keep you energetically stuck and struggling in your business.

Avid reader, Tammy asked me recently:

“What do you do with the books that muliply like Topsy (I’m a reader – I do recycle, but some books are meant to stay forever). I have 3 floor to ceiling double wide bookcases in my office and one in another room, and a 1/2 bookcase by my desk. And they’re full to overflowing! Including the art magazines which I am loathe to get rid of. The basement is my studio (another bookcase down there – stuffed). Any ideas?”

If Tammy and I were working together one-on-one, I’d want to know what her books mean to her personally and what they represent for her. It’s really juicy stuff!

But for the purpose of this Wednesday Makeover, I want to suggest a process I use in my consulting work (and on myself).

1. Notice that you think of what’s in a container as one solid unit - a whole shelf, a whole box. It looks like one big thing, but it isn’t. Recognize that they’re full of separate, unique items.

2. Identify a space you want to work in and then pick up one book and ask yourself:

• Does this still represent who I am?
• Does this represent where I am going?
• Is there someone who can use this information more than I can?

3. Use your intuition. Instead of letting your head/intellect run the show, check in with your heart’s wisdom. What does it tell you about the book in your hand?

You will find that you’re able to remove individual books and other reading materials that are no longer serving you – leaving what actually supports you. And it can feel satisfying to know that someone else’s life can be enriched by sharing the information that was once so useful to you.

Libraries, thrift stores, and Amazon are all great places to donate or sell the materials you no longer need.

How do you decide how and when to get rid of your books? Is it a difficult process?

Post from: My Organized Biz

When Miranda emailed me about her office, she summed it up with this comment: “…it seems like there’s just too much to cram into the six foot area that I like.”

Miranda, when I look at your photo, “cluttered” is not the word that comes to mind. You’re bring super creative with the space you’ve got with all the plastic bins and shelving. However, you do have an issue that makes your space more prone to clutter: insufficient storage.

The basic theory is this: If there’s a place for things to go, they don’t pile up. If there isn’t, they do. So here are 3 suggestions to increase your storage capacity – which, in turn, will make the extra bits you’ve got floating around disappear.

Suggestion 1: Print elsewhere

Even though your desk measures 6′ long, you actually have about 1.5 square feet of work space on your desk. Not a lot.

By moving the printer, you’ll gain a ton of space that you can store current projects that you need to access multiple times during the day. I’m guessing you don’t use the printer quite that often.

Where do you put it? That’s the next point…

Suggestion 2: Get a dog leg

I don’t know how many hours per day you’re at your desk, but since you blog I’m guessing its a lot. Dear Miranda, this desk you’ve got isn’t worthy of your hard work. It’s too high for you (Maggie had this issue last week, too) and it’s also not big enough.

I’d love to see you with a desk that has some drawers within arm’s reach and a file drawer or two. That would give all the little things under your monitor a place to go. You’d also get an actual surface to work on rather than that tiny 8.5×11″ square.

If a shiny new desk isn’t in the budget (I recommend Ikea for great value), at least get another table and put it on the right side along the wall at a 90* angle. An L-shaped (dog leg) workspace will give you more surface area to store lots of things and a place to put the printer off at the end.

Suggestion 3: Oh, give them a home…

You’ve got some great projects (article ideas) and short-term storage needs (bills) – and you said they’re piling up. So let’s give them a place to live so they won’t.

I’d love to see you hang some shelves over your desk so that you can put some books up and add some project boxes. These provide loose storage (but organized enough) and give assorted papers a place that’s easy to access. Best of all, it gets them off your desk.

For your article ideas, you could also assign a folder as your “article garden” and just drop idea in there when you get. Whatever you do, vertical is better than horizontal when it comes to storage. So be on the lookout for ways you’d want to store things short-term.

Summary: Give yourself more space and start thinking creatively about how you want to store your projects. I know I’ve evaded your question about clutter, but I think this is more on target for what you need.

Thnaks for playing, Miranda!

If you’d like a Wednesday Makeover with 3 suggestions for your office, read how.

What do you think?

Post from: My Organized Biz

Issue 1: Storage

“There are a bunch things stuck in cubbyholes that need to be filed or put somewhere else. There are things on my desk that are completely unrelated to working (like GPS and headphone accessories).

“When my desk was new, there was nothing on it. Now, it’s gotten to the point where there’s no place to set anything on my desk and I don’t know where anything is, or I have only a vague idea.”

Time does funny things to desks – especially if you’re busy. Items with no home get put down temporarily and have a way of becoming permanent. Fortunately, they’re not glued down.

Suggested solutions: You’ll want to give some thought to where you’d like to store those odds and ends so you can find them easily, but they’re not taking up as much surface area on your workspace. You may also want to set up a system to remind yourself to remove items that you don’t need from your desk. Every few weeks would be a good start.

Issue 2: Excess mail:

“I have at least a month’s worth of mail on the floor next to the desk waiting to be shredded or filed. That’s a problem because things that are important get lost in the pile of junk mail, catalogs, and magazines. Last month I missed a bill deadline because the statement was lost in the sea of papers.”

That’s got to be a bad feeling – and yet most of us have done it at some point. There’s hope yet.

Suggested solutions: Check out this blog post about how to stem the tide of unwanted mail – just decreasing the amount you receive will help dramatically.

As for getting rid of the pile you already have, you can take the same approach as the things accumulating on your desk. Start whittling away. Try setting a timer for 20 minutes and see how much you can get through (it might even be fun).

Issue 3: Ergonomics (or lack thereof)

“My desk is 30 inches high which is not efficient unless you’re Wilt Chamberlain. I’m 5′5″ so when I sit down, it’s not comfortable. My elbows aren’t level with the desk and if I lift my chair up, my feet are off the floor.”

Desk height is a peeve of mine – and you’re right, most desks are made for a person 6’ tall. What are they thinking?

Suggested solutions: Your desk has legs like a table, so you can simply whack a couple of inches off each one. There’s a trick to measuring this, so send me an email if you want to know the specifics. If you’re in the market for a new desk, some companies sell desks with adjustable legs and others sell furniture customized to your height.

Thanks for sharing the inner workings of your office, Maggie. I’d love to hear if these changes will work for you. If you’d like 3 suggestions for your office challenges, here are all the details.

Anyone relate to Maggie’s challenges or have other solutions that might work? Your thoughts are appreciated!

Post from: My Organized Biz