Clean up your workspace

July 30, 2012

For the past few months I've been working all over town. A friend's office some days, a coffee-shop on other days, pubs, bookstores, collaborative workspaces, or anywhere with decent wifi. This has resulted a little neglect with the home office. It's easy to throw things on your desk when you aren't using it and living out of a laptop bag."

For the past few months I’ve been working all over town. A friends office some days, a coffee-shop on other days, pubs, bookstores, collaborative workspaces, or anywhere with decent wifi. This has caused a little neglect with the home office. It’s easy to throw things on your desk when you aren’t using it and living out of a laptop bag.

Some things have changed recently that has me working from home more, and starting next week, I’ll be working from home full-time. During this time I’ve been trying to get back into the swing of coding on giant monitors and not a little 13” MackBook Air. Something about my office was really bothering me. I felt claustrophobic. Disorganized. Constantly annoyed.

I kept telling my wife that I needed to make a change but I wasn’t sure what. I’ve been eyeing this Travola Table desk for a while now and figured maybe now’s the time (Shhh, she doesn’t know). I really like this desk, mostly because it’s incredibly sturdy and you can write on it with dry-erase markers. I also have the exact amount of space needed for it if I got rid of my wife’s desk and moved her to my current one. It’s not cheep though so I’ve been putting it off. Low WAF if you know what I mean.

My wife and I decided instead to clean. Yeah, just clean, what a strange concept…

##Before/After pics of the office

before:

I’m sure this is probably an average looking home office, but really there is clutter everywhere. The wires under my wife’s desk really bother me.

after:

Hunh, so what changed?

• I got rid of all paper except my field notes and a single sticky pad. This means everything was either scanned into Evernote and shredded, or just thrown out.
• Nothing is allowed on my desk unless it’s used at least once a day (Exception is the Mac Classic, and the Windows Home Media Center. I haven’t found a place to stick those). Even the MacBook Pro is gone. All that remains is my desktop machine, a Blue Yetti microphone, an AirPort Extreme, an iPad, and a Bose Sound Dock.
• My wife cleaned up her desk as well. Filed things away, hide things in drawers. Very nice of her considering she’s knee-deep in planning a baby shower for her sister.
• Foot space. I think a large part of my problem was a box of books that was at my feet. I moved that to the garage and instantly felt a sense of openness when I sit down (sorry, the original pic doesn’t show the box under my desk).

#I’m not done yet.

I need to find a place for the Media Center and the old mac. I also want to get rid of the junk at the top of my desk hutch. It’s a graveyard of toys that we are hiding from our kids and old gadgets I don’t use anymore. From these pictures I can see a remote control car, a soccer ball, a model rocket, a TiVo, and a Microsoft ergo keyboard 4000.

I’d like to move the printer as well because it comes out maybe twice a year for special projects (a.k.a. someone in our family is getting married or having a baby).

I still think I’m going to get a new desk that is longer and move my wife to my desk. I want the additional room for the monitors and I really want the table-top space so that I can use it as a dry-erase scratch pad.

We’ll see how I feel next week when I start working from home full time again. Just sitting in my desk tonight while I write this has felt great without the clutter.

I’m obsessed with home workspaces. I really enjoy LifeHackers’s featured workspace series. The amazing home offices always put mine to shame. Do you have an interesting home office? Send me a link and I’ll show it here.