Claim Back Your Office

During the night I had an ah-ha moment.  When speaking with clients I always discuss having your home office clutter-free, organized and tidy.  The weeks leading up to my holidays I was busy trying to get all the tasks sorted out and dropped the ball a little.  I then shut the door of my office and decided I would deal with it all on my return.  My return didn’t go to plan and I ended up taking off a little more time than expected.  For the last two weeks I have been busily catching up on all the things that pile up whilst your away.  During the last two weeks I have felt disorganized and if I am totally truthful my work has been fragmented.

Last night I woke up in the early hours feeling quite anxious about what I needed to achieve this week, there were flyers to produce, blog entries, finalize the details of my talk for the Kingston Women’s Business Network next week, final script adjustments for my free webinar the following day, clients to book in and the list goes on.  Well, in those early hours came my ah-ha moment. Tomorrow morning I am not going to turn on my computer until 10am!  I am going to grab some garbage bags, recycle boxes and my files for filing and I am going to work solid for two and a half hours and clear out my office, desk and filing.  My gosh, I was like a woman on a mission.  Bags of rubbish, papers shredded, papers filed, files labeled, floors swept, desk dusted, bins emptied, you name it I did it.  I really was a mad woman and I was on a mission.

For weeks, I had allowed myself to work in an unhealthy, messy and disorganized environment.  My thoughts had been all over the place, I was wasting time looking for papers, notes etc.  At one stage I spent about 10 minutes looking for my stapler, what was I thinking?

Just leaving the computer off, not answering any calls and having a clear focus on what it was I wanted to achieve gave me the ability to clear out all of the clutter that had built up over the last two months and regain my sanity and my time.

Whilst cleaning away the clutter and mess I felt I really made headway.  I decided right there in the middle of the muddle that from now on I am going to turn my computer on ½ an hour later every morning and clear away, file, tidy and gain back my home office space.  At least dedicating ½ an hour each morning means I won’t get myself into the pickle that I had found myself in.

Do you have a similar story?  How has de-cluttering helped you?