Learning to Change While Cleaning a Disaster Zone (aka my office)

Clear guidance for sorting crap

I am a horizontal filer. The desk in my office mainly exists as a repository for papers. So does my side table. So does the floor, for that matter. Pretty much every surface, in fact. (There’s enough stuff buried there to take core samples.) It’s not that I like it that way. It’s that I always seem to be busy, and the idea of cleaning up that whole place has been far too daunting to get started.

I know the big goal here. The question is, can I come up with a simple structure that lets me feel like I’m making progress from the very beginning, even if that progress will be slow? So here comes my first change principle: Keep it simple.

The most likely way for me to get bogged down is to try to file each thing in its proper place as I get to it. (This is a trap I’ve fallen into during several previous – and short-lived – attempts to clean the disaster zone.) My wife has a piece of advice to keep me focused at the right level: “Don’t try to find a cure for cancer buried in there somewhere; you just want to see the rug again.” The best way to keep it simple is to choose a few categories and just sort it at the top level. Get rid of the obvious junk, pile up the stuff for immediate action, and another pile for things that can wait. It amazed me how quickly I got rid of a huge volume of stuff. Not that I’m done yet, but the movement is palpable. I’ll check in on this project down the line and see if I can keep up the momentum.