National Clean Your Desk Day

Good. Monday afternoon, everybody. It's 12:00 straight up. Happy national clear your desk day. And I am your organization coach, Dan Cunningham, here to talk about it. What a more perfect topic for me. I love organization. I thrive on organization and I love to focus on how organization and mental health are connected. They certainly have been for me my whole life, and I know they are for you. When you sit down at a desk that's in disarray, that's covered with papers and piles of everything, it's so much harder to navigate through a work day.

You waste time looking for documents that you can't find. Find. Maybe you're purchasing extra things because you can't find the things you need in your work area. Whatever the case may be. If you're disorganized, your work is going to suffer and it's just going to take you longer to complete the tasks that you want to complete. If you can identify a system that works for you, that's what's really going to be the secret. If you have an organizer that's coming in and telling you that you have to do A, B and C and D, that may be the case, but not always.

It's really good to check in with yourself and identify the things that have worked for you in the past and any new systems you put in place, check in and make sure they're working for you. And if not, tweak them. If you ever need any help at all, feel free to reach out any organizing questions or concerns. I'm always available. And you can also interact with this live. You can comment, you can give me a thumbs up or save the video and come back and check it out in the future. All right, so let's get to it.

So one of the first things you want to do is clear your area. Right. Whenever I start organizing session, I like to identify the area that we're going to work on and do a clearing in preparation for that. Get a large trash container and fill that container up. Hello. Hey, Alec. Hey, Karzaz. Hey. So Phil, get a bin because you're going to hopefully be getting rid of a lot of stuff. Also make a pile of recycle. I'm big on recycling paper especially, and so make sure recycle bin is close by. You want to eliminate all of the paper on your desk first.

Keep that in a box somewhere to the side and as you're going through it, you know, dump what doesn't belong, remove anything from the desk area that doesn't pertain to your work and follow these rules. Put an inbox on your desk. This is a box for anything coming in, right? So develop a process for yourself for things coming in, work being done, things going out or filed or completed. That's kind of a general process, right? We all go through in work out. So figure out the system that works for you.

This is a good one to try. Inbox, outbox, and then working file. I always love a working file. Like, these are the things that I'm working on. And actually those three areas, you could leave your desk every day and come back and you know what's happening, right? It's all right there. You don't have to rifle around for everything, looking for stuff that you're never going to find. Getting all agitated, that's what happens to me. That's why I developed all these systems, because I just get so agitated when I can't, you know, I can't just go on to the next thing because I can't find whatever it is I need.

It always has been a big trigger for me. So organization and systems that I put in place have always helped. The second thing we want to talk about is you want to have your bin within easy reach, not only while we're doing this process, but during your work day, right. You don't want the trash bin to be somewhere where you can't chuck things in it from your seated position. Or if you're like Alec working on a treadmill, if you haven't seen this picture on the community forum, go check it out. He has the best system for treadmill and working.

I mean, seriously, I looked at it, he actually had a system. I could see his system and I love that. Way to go. Hey, Sarah. Yay, Sarah Butler's here. Thank you for checking in. We're talking organization national clear your desk day. So we're on number two. Have a been within easy reach. You want this in reach every day, not just today while we're doing your clearing. The third thing you want to do is use less paper. Less paper coming in, less paper you have to touch and deal with, less paper you have to throw out.

So you can't really control always the paper coming in, but you can scan documents, take pictures of them. So many really good apps for the, for the phone, for scanning documents, quickly filing them and releasing the paper. Don't forget, recycle bins for the paper and recycle anything you can. Also, I found out talking about recycling real quick, styrofoam has been kind of a big bummer because they don't recycle styrofoam in the bins in our community. But I found out that a local church collects styrofoam, and there are places that will come pick up bulk styrofoam for recycling.

So look around in your area for styrofoam recycling. Okay, so we're gonna put an inbox on your desk. You're going to have a bin within easy reach, and you're gonna lose or use less paper. And then you want to get rid of all the unnecessary clutter. So I like a rule, like, two pieces of personal things, like a picture and a, you know, whatevs. But you don't want your whole desk packed with all this stuff that doesn't pertain to work. So try to minimize the clutter. Pull anything that you're not. This was one rule that I learned when I was doing research on this.

If you are not using it every single day, then, hey, Risa, I love seeing everybody here. It's so exciting. And don't forget, leave comments, leave thumbs up, save the live, come back and see it later for easy reference. So we're talking about. We're talking about organizing our desk. So getting rid of unnecessary clutter, it's really going to help you move along. So if you're not using it every single day, you know, get it off your desk, find a spot. You know, the things that you use most often, you want the closest, and the things you use least often, put them in a cabinet or wherever else.

But we're talking about your desk top, your work area. We'll talk about computer desktops, too, in a minute. Okay, so we're getting rid of unnecessary clutter. You want to plan regular cleaning intervals so you don't get to this spot again. If you have a clean, awesome system, clean desk, that's great. But if you don't and you're going through this process, check in every week, you know, say, hey, things are a little out of control. I got to tidy up and go back, check out some of the things we're talking about today and just do a touch up.

I did a lot of touch up work for people that I worked for. Cleaning and organizing and touching up. We call them resets. Resets are so important because they just keep you on track and they allow for less total chaos. And you don't want to get to the point where it's going to take you in a whole day to deal with this stuff. So back to kind of finding the systems that make sense for you. Those will help the ongoing process, but make kind of regular check ins part of that process, too. Take before and after pictures when you organize, it's one thing I have forgotten to do so much and I'm like, oh man, it was such a cool project.

But take before and after pictures and keep them handy. Like, keep them in your top drawer and take a peek when you want to get back to the organized desks that you came up with, the system you came up with today. Peek at the picture. It'll be a shortcut for you. All right. When in doubt, throw it out. But if you're really, really in doubt, take a picture of it. Take a picture of the document. Get rid of it. That way, if you really do need to refer to whatever material it is later that you can check it out.

And then this one is great. Scan everything you can. We talked about that when dealing with paper. Tiny scan is a great app on the phone. That's the one I use. You can also, if you don't have a scanner and you're not really tech savvy, check your library. Many libraries have scanners, and not only that, but the people at the library are always so helpful and will help you out with the process. You need help. This is also really good for photographs, kind of off the desk topic, but it's a great method.

And then the last one clear before you go. Right. So when you come back and you sit down, you've got all of your in stuff in the in box. You've got your working file that you can grab right away and you can glance and see what you need to take care of. And I love that. Move it out of the way. Happy national Clearing house day. I hope you get something done. Also, I did say that we were going to address computer desktops. Check this out. Go to your computer desktop and check out are you cool with it?

Do you need to tweak it a little bit? One great thing to do is just create files right there on your desktop and slide different documents over into those files. Take some time and think about how you use your computer where you want to access files again. If you need help, never hesitate to reach out. So I hope you have a great rest of your Monday. I hope you clear your desk. I hope you give me thumbs up and leave me a comment. And if you have any ideas to share about national clear your desk day, leave them in the comments so people, people will come back and watch the live their livestream, but they're always available to view on Cadre.

So leave your tips and tricks in the comments. People would love them, I'm sure. So thanks for checking in. This is Dan signing off for today. I love you guys. And I love Cadre. Bye. Can you clear that off my desk, please?