How the Queen of Clutter Cleared Her Desk

For a lot of years, I'm not telling how many, my desk has looked like the first photo. Well, ok, the stacks change, but to the uninitiated it always looks like the same mess. I'm hoping "a cluttered desk is the sign of genius" is really true. I'm living proof of one application of the 80-20 law... you use 20 percent of your stuff 80 percent of the time. And I like to keep it handy. I write on scraps of paper on top of the pile that's on top of the pile...

But for about a week now, my desk has looked like the second photo! Am I dead? No, not even ill. (Wait... let me check my pulse.)

What has brought about this miracle? Some epiphany of guilt, so that I've finally beaten myself into joining the neat freaks? (And of course my husband is one of those freaks. For decades he just shook his head as he walked by my office door. Now, he's scratching that head in wonder at the transformation, and hoping it's not temporary.)

No, I think that I've actually discovered a system that works for me, to keep oft-used projects close at hand, but off the actual work surface of my desk.

Let me explain that my life has always been organized around projects. Most day-planners, and other systems are organized around a schedule. So popular methods and systems for getting organized have never been much help to me. In fact, they've usually just sidetracked me from getting anything done.

At any given time in my life I probably have about 15 to 25 different projects going that require my attention at sporadic intervals. When I work on them is mostly up to me. Some appointments or regularly scheduled tasks appear on my calendar, but usually no one cares if I work on project A from 10 am to 10:30 or at 3 o'clock in the morning.

Meanwhile, as I shifted from project to project the current stack of associated papers would just be moved to the left side of my desk and sit there, while I rationalized, "I'm working on this right now, so I'll just keep it handy." But other tasks became priorities, or the muse changed tunes, and soon the unused pile had grown a foot tall. Then I would move the entire stack to another table, where it gained the label "to be filed." Ha! And if you think I have a secretary you should think again.

I sort of grew into this solution, and I'll tell you about the journey. For years a very organized friend has been trying to teach me to keep each project in a separate box. But this was too cumbersome with so many current projects. I was not willing to go two rooms or an outbuilding away every time I switched projects, although it has worked for projects that I work on less often. So, a couple of years ago I bought a tall plain bookcase. Then I began collecting shallow boxes that would sit on the shelves. Medium pizza boxes with the lids removed, and taped, worked well. I labeled each box with a project, and stacked these on the shelves. It was messy, but I could shlep pieces of projects and paperwork into those trays when they were ready to file. This helped a lot. I was no longer throwing everything into one big box labeled "to be filed."

But last week it hit me that I was using those shelves wrong. Instead of using them for the staging area for filing, I need to be using them for the "hot bins" for each project. The currently in use items for each project now go in one of these trays. When I want to work on that project, I pull out the tray and place it on an adjacent work table. I work on that project for 10 minutes or 10 hours, and put the tray back on the shelf. It works! I can hardly believe it has taken me a lifetime to discover this.

No more hunting through the pile for all the little slips of paper that go with a particular project! No more piles sliding to the floor in chaos! No more trying to locate something by trying to remember if last week was 6 inches down in the pile or a foot deep.

I've rewarded myself with some cheap plastic drawers to make the system look better. When the budget allows, I'll probably get some more.

If you think this system will work for you, skip the journey, and go straight to the "hot bins." Use some cardboard boxes to try it out, then make the system look better by any means you can afford, and like.

And if you are not one of the project people, go ahead and enjoy a chuckle at my expense. I can stand it!