Desk Disaster

Over winter vacation, my school decided to change my desk. They did this by taking everything from my old desk (as well as my cabinet space) and dumping it in a large pile on a new desk, complete with trash and belongings from the old desk occupant.

An hour and one package of cleaning wipes later, things looked a little better!
Here are some tips to deal with a disasterous desk space:

• Move everything onto the floor and clean the desk thoroughly. This will cut down on the amount of cleaning you'll have to do in the future.
• If you have a glass top, consider getting rid of it. It traps things underneath, making it harder to clean, and it's hard to use your mouse on glass. In my case, the underside of my glass top was plastered with dried up Korean papers that wouldn't come off, which made it an easy decision to ditch the glass.
• Thread computer cords through a hole in your desk or behind the desk. Getting them off the surface of the desk makes it look less crowded.
• Organize your books by size, putting the smaller books closest to you. In a small bookshelf, it's not hard to find what you need, so a size-based organization will make your bookshelf look more streamlined. It will also make your desk feel bigger.
• Hang an over-the-door hook (or command hook) under your desk to hold things like a lint roller, umbrella, and small towel (in my case, my school has no paper towels).
• Give yourself an inbox to corral all those papers that you need to deal with that you're just too lazy to organize right now. If you look carefully, mine is in a paper box top on the filing cabinet under my desk. My rule of thumb is that if it gets too high to fit under the desk, I dump it all out and sort through it. This makes an excellent form of procrastination.
• If it's not yours, get rid of it. Especially if it's in another language that you can't understand.
• If you haven't used it in the past 6 months, either toss it or give it to someone who will use it. In my case, I relocated my half-used erasers, stamps, expired hot chocolate mix, and a mysterious key to the trash can.

Once you're organized in a way that makes you happy, it will be easier to stay organized in the future!