Detail Notes: Several years worth of Tetris...

I recently left a position after 15years and can tell you that I removed several boxes of personal items from a very small space. More boxes than I thought was possible considering the size of my office and the fact that I never felt cluttered there. It was mostly art and personal items that I had found a space for – made me think that I was better at Tetris with real life things than I was at the video game I tried so hard to conquer in the ‘80s.

A client contacted me because she has been in her office for 14 years and had a lot of stuff - a lot of stuff that was kind of all over the place.

This is what was making her unhappy and unfocused.

We all know how much can accumulate in just 1 year – 14 years of stuff can be intimidating.

Our goal was to make her work space a pleasant environment for her to be able to focus in. After all, being in arts education, she spends a lot of time at work and having a clean, uncluttered space to go to when there is a break between teaching classes and running rehearsals, is important if one is going to survive another set of college students.

As an educator, she has things that she is required to keep for a series of years, she has things that mark milestones, and she has things that she has not dealt with. 14 years of things.

We evaluated how her job processes have changed over the years and made sure to remove the things that she no longer used to do her job. It was like getting rid of the typewriter after having bought the computer. She had just not gotten rid of the typewriter yet.

We also purged anything that she is no longer obligated to hold on to and created a rotating file box where she can insert the current year and purge the 3^rd year of her required paper storage.

We tackled the 800sq feet of office and redesigned how she used the space allowing for a more open position for when she is working with students.

She wanted to remove one of the shelf units because as she put it, "it’s just ugly" and we determined that she no longer needed several things so she disposed of those items and took a small stack home – my favorite of which was the dual cassette player. I had to chuckle when I realized that I never saw an actual cassette in the office.

We spent 8 hours in her space and at the end of the day, she said that she loved walking into her office and was excited to get working on the homework I assigned her.

Taking small steps is key. One room at a time. One project at a time.

She was very motivated to start her next year of teaching in an organized space. I’m sure here first week was a focused one.