Office Update

Office Update

If you have an obsession to be organized like I do then you must love the saying "A place for everything and everything in it's place." I feel like I have my act together whenever someone needs something and I can go directly to that item without searching for it. Somehow over the last 6 years I lost that capability to find everything or even know if I still had that item in question. Trying to get back some of that control over my household has been driving me to achieve that organization I once possessed.

I drew this little plan with labels on several boxes with the hope that if I saw it on paper I would be able to eliminate everything that wasn't neccessary. Color coding my boxes helped me see progress since the clutter was so distracting. Although it would be really nice to say I am finished or to just hurry through, which neither are the case, but I do have progress to report.

1. First I must go on record to say 'It has been so hard to let things go.' I have been toting extra baggage around because my thoughts were 'I might need that (fill in the blank book, item) someday.' Some of the squares on the floorplan are not actual boxes but piles like the yellow ones ontop of the desk. Because I think yellow is a happy color I started here. As I worked sorting/shredding I could see immediate results. This also created a TO BE FILED pile, which started a domino effect.

2. Since I did not have an empty drawer to place my TO BE FILED papers in. I knew my next task would be to empty the file cabinet drawers. I knew this old metal 4 drawer cabinet was packed full. In it I found a ton of unnecessary papers, Homeschooling information plus visuals, old client info, and manuels to equipment we no longer had!! More sorting and shredding.

3. Amid all the sorting, shredding I received an invitation to sell Homeschool curriculm one Saturday last month. Notice that the school books are removed from the office YEAH!! My daughters assisted me in the sale from gathering, sorting, & pricing books and other school products. Simply removing these books helped to eliminate the boxes off the floor in front of the file cabinet and book shelves. I would not have been able to sell these item without the words of wisdom from my aunt Betty. She said "It's time to embrace this new chapter in your life."
I let those words sink in.
Just accepting the fact that I no longer need curricula brings the reality that my little babies have grown up. ;{

Clearing out the school books allowed for emptying a few more boxes and I had double rows of books on several shelves. I still need to rearrange the books I do want to keep, and there are still quite a lot, but the shelves are no longer gasping for relief. 

Love my floorspace.

4. It's funny how all this overlaps and I really can't list these tasks out numerically. But I can tell you that the next move was to empty all the mini file totes and place those items inside the tall file cabinet. This was a bigger task than removing books, because I'm still sorting/shredding. I have a joke for you that I saw on the top of my bank statement. It asked "What's black and white, and read all over?' The answer was 'your bank statement.' So shredding is important to me however our recycle days are every other week and lets face it that bin can only hold so much.  I am feeling like I'm back to square one except that I have acheived a little more breathing room. I didn't sell all of my homeschool items, but I will not be bringing them back into this space. Those totes I used to transport books to the sale will be placed in the attic as soon as I cross off everything sold. I need to update/finish my craig's list of these books for sale while I wait for the next opportunity I have to sell them which is next spring.

I will report progress soon. Hopefully.
CONNIE