The Zen Desk

Anyone who knows me in “real life” knows that I’m a huge stickler for organization. Nothing turns me on more than seeing a room, shelf or closet that’s tidy and symetric. One of my favorite things is when someone who is drowning in clutter asks me to come over and help them get organized. Weird? I know.

I feel more at peace in a place where I know I can find what I’m looking for and my eyes aren’t going bonkers trying to take in my surroundings. I know lots of people love “orgainzed chaos” and can function well in that kind of enviroment…but I can’t. This side of my personality is most apparent at my job. Among other things my position requires me to process large amounts of data and consolodate it into simple and easy to understand reports and graphs as well as accounts payable duties for the entire department.

I deal with A LOT of paper every day. It’s only apparent how much crap crosses my desk when I take a day off because I’ll come back and the inbox is overflowing (and scary)…I think this may be a tatic by my bosses to ensure I don’t take days off *chuckle* I have multiple stacking paper sorters on the desk that will hold all invoices from their reception into the office through the entire payment process (gotta love corporate red tape) to end point of filing away in a clean and organized file drawer that comes complete with a self created self-archiving system. Yep, I’m a nerd.

But before I took over my position the payables process was a wreck. The person that had the duty before me couldn’t keep up with the work load, things got lost or misplaced all the time, it was impossible to find anything and was just a completely frustrating job. When I took over the main goal was to whip things back into shape. I hate for my desk to have unnecessary papers on it and I only keep out what I’m working on at the moment. It makes it way easier for me to focus and remember what I’m doing.

My desk stays clean looking all the time because at the end of each day I take a couple minutes before closing time and straighten up my papers and put everything away. Every Friday at 10 til 5 o’clock I stop what I’m doing and dust my desk, make a quick sweep of any unnecessary papers and make sure my little cubie is completly clean for the week ahead. I don’t keep a giant cup full of a thousand pens and pencils on my desk, I have a small pen cup that holds one nice black pen, a red pen, one nice mechanical pencil, two highlighters and a sharpie. The bigger stuff is stashed in a side drawer and I only keep the bare minimum supplies at my desk to avoid crowding. These simple things make it nice to come into the office in the morning, I don’t feel as though I’m being bitchslapped by my work as soon as I walk in.

A lot of the people at work keep forty thousand pictures of their families on their shelves that get mixed in with outdated training manuals, stacks of papers, knick nacks, half dead plants and god knows what else. The space under their desk is filled with boxes of papers that could easily be stored somewhere else (like the huge row of open file cabinents they gave us). There’s a couple desks at work where I get truly clostrophobic sitting at due to the amount of shit and dust they have in their cube. My shelfs are simplified for functionality, I keep one plant, a decrotative candle our boss gave us for Christmas last year, one picture that means the world to me and only the most recent version of the training guide for my desk. The three binders I use daily on the shelf have matching lables and are kept clean looking. The only thing under the desk in my cube is a trash can.

It makes me wonder if my OCD has anything to do with why I love my job so much and managed to have great production times. The people around the office that bitch the most and hate their jobs the most are the ones that are drownding in clutter. Some people there swear by how their do their work but when it comes down to it their work is as sloppy as their workspace. I think at least your office should be kept well, no one else wants to see a wreck-desk during the day and you’ll be so much more productive in the long run. *steps off soap box*