At work, my desk is reasonably neat, though I am experiencing some “junk creep.” You know, that little corner you set aside for odds and ends that tends to grow over time?

In my home office, my desk has been overtaken by “miscellaneous sprawl.” I reclaimed about 12 square inches of space this evening.

Minor organization is my Achilles’ heel. You see, the major stuff I can keep together. Perhaps I procrastinate a bit in organizing it as I should, but I can keep the major stuff together. Got a big project? Keep it all together in one folder.

It’s the stuff that falls under “miscellaneous” that’ll kill you.

Blogging stuff, for example, is easy enough to keep together. Information relating to affiliate programs can be grouped together too. But then come the things that maybe you’ll sign up for and use once, and they don’t fit any of your major categories. So, you stick it under “miscellaneous.”

But, as things progress, more and more things tend to keep going under “miscellaneous” and then you forget about smaller categories that you had established, and end up filing new items under “miscellaneous.” Periodically, you clean out the miscellaneous file, categorizing groups that had grown inside the file and moving items that had a pre-existing category to the appropriate file. And, you toss stuff that is no longer of use. And then you discover you still have a bunch of miscellaneous stuff you don’t know what to do with.

Back in the miscellaneous file it goes, along with all the other stuff on your desk that had accumulated and now has no other home than “miscellaneous.”

Now, meet miscellaneous’ partner-in-crime, “temporary.” Here is all the stuff you don’t need for long but you’ll do something with later. Stuff like things that sounded interesting, but you didn’t have time to look into when you received it or coupons and special offers. Maybe that book or website a friend told you about, or a newspaper article clipping. All that goes into your “temporary” folder or box. These coupons and offers will likely have been expired for months before you’ll ever look at them again–but at least then you won’t experience any guilt for throwing them away, whereas before you felt you might use them so it would be a waste to pitch them.

Eventually, temporary and miscellaneous start piling up, and you start new folders or stacks with the intention of not putting another thing in the original folders until you clean them out!

Naturally, this results in “temporary temporary” and “temporary miscellaneous” folders or stacks being developed so you can keep stuff “organized” until you clean out the original temporary and miscellaneous folders.

Meanwhile, your categorized stuff gets buried and forgotten, so you start new folders for the categories you had forgotten you already had and additional “temporary” folders for the categories you know you have but can’t get to. So, the stuff goes into the “temporary” folders until you can get to the original folders again, which will be after you’ve cleaned out the original “miscellaneous” and “temporary” stacks and drawers.

In the midst of all that, flyers, magazines, small packages, instruction manuals, notes, spare cables, computer hardware and other odds and ends get mixed in.

The end result is an organized clutter that leaves you scratching your head as to where to even begin. So, you clean off 12 square inches of space, declare victory for the day, and blog about it.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 5th, 2007 at 12:18 am and is filed under Business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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