Welcome to month 3 of my Declutter with Me series, the series where I go through my stuff and get rid of everything I can, while teaching you some tips that I have learned along the way.
For previous posts you can check out my posts on:
Now because I am currently living in a very small space my office is not a room, but rather a small corner of my bedroom where I can hold a few drawer units, and a bin that stays under the bed to hold some of my older supplies.
I also will not be going through any important documents in this post, as I will be saving that for a post on vital documents and important papers. Those are held in two accordion folders in a different random location.
Now most of these things I have not touched since we moved into this place in May and the under the bed box was mostly packed back in Ontario so it was time for it to be gone through and my drawers of supplies were getting very messy.
I started with the black basket on the top of the drawers which had become a catch all basket. This mainly included a lot of things to throw out/recycle, some papers to move and some supplies to put back in the drawers.
The first white drawers I decided to make my planning/card drawer cleaning a lot of things out of them. The first drawer I now only keep cards/postcards, the middle is my washi drawer which I use for planning and I got rid of a few rolls that I never use and the final drawer I used to hold all my extra business cards, a fancy punch, and my stapler.
For the bigger drawers I focused on the materials that I used the most and wanted to have accessible. I kept the first drawer for home supplies and few cords, the second kept all of my extra sharpies, pencils, art supplies and hole punch. The final drawer is for all my extra paper and notebooks.
Under this drawer I keep my laptop case and paper cutter which don’t fit into the drawers.
The white bin is where I really did most of my cleaning out. There were three binders full of coursework from my masters which I really didn’t need. I kept all of my notes and important information and got rid of all the readings and slides that I can just look up later and was able to get it all to fit into one binder. I got rid of a few other random supplies that filled up the bin that I no longer needed as well as taking the paper out of a few half empty notebooks that I wouldn’t have used and would rather use the paper by itself.
This is all of the items that I am getting rid of from my office area divided into piles for recycling, garbage, shredding, and give away. For a very tiny office area I think I did quite well and managed to get rid of a few excess things I no longer needed.
My Tips for Decluttering your Office Area:
- Clear out duplicates: Excess markers, pens, paper, and supplies can really pile up. Consider donating these to a teacher or someone else who can make use of them
- Scan and purge: If there are papers that you have that you can scan into your computer and then recycle consider doing it to get rid of some of the clutter that builds up
- Can I find it online?: I had a few ikea instruction manuals in my office area that I can get rid of because all that is online so it is worthless for me to keep it as well
- In a small space keep items out of the way: My under the bed bin is perfect for keeping the items I want for the future, but don’t need on a daily, weekly, or even monthly basis and it doesn’t clutter up my main office space
- Have a bin for items you need to take care of, but clear it out: Having a space to put important papers until they are taken care of is a good idea, but make sure it doesn’t become a catch all bin and that you get rid of the items you don’t need or are really just trash
That is it for my decluttering tips today. Happy cleaning and I hope that some of these tips help you.
What should I work on decluttering next?
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