CHECK OUT THIS DESK! Paper is the bane of my existence so I can totally relate to the challenge that office workers face in our current knowledge economy. Papers, emails, phone messages...it never stops.

Can you relate to this? Just seeing the image muddles my thinking and makes me wonder what impact it has on productivity. Talk about visual clutter! Imagine facing this mess every morning at 9:00am...

What a difference! Clear working space, files neatly lined up along the right, just a few personal effects on the top shelf and loads of room in the filing cabinet for files.

"One person's trash is another person's treasure". Most people can donate unwanted items and sure enough, these treasures were left in the lunch room for co-workers to fight over. All but one was claimed (my partner couldn't believe that I didn't grab the yoda doll. Oops!).
Don't be distracted by action items. Group them into a pile or make a list but keep clearing! In this example, we cleared on a Saturday and the action items were staring him in the face Monday morning.
The key to tackling a specific area is to sort into boxes so that you don't create more of a mess. Garbage, Recycle, Action and Take Home are common categories. Shred, return to rightful owner and undecided are examples of other categories to sort into. In actuality, we emptied the recycle box about three times during the course of this clearing. Time required? Less than two hours. How long it stayed tidy? Only the co-workers know the answer to that question!