steps for desk organization
- Clear any unnecessary papers, items or work off your desk. This will give you a clear space for the needed things on your desk. Not all of them will need to be thrown out, they just do not need to be on your desk, so you can file these into binders, shelves or drawers, and mark them in certain categories.
- Now that your desk is cleared of anything not needed, we can organize the things you do need. As we can see in the example on the left, each item has a different place to go for easy access and use. As most desks have drawers, you can put pens, calculators, notecards, paperclips, pins and other every day items in the top drawer. Papers, notebooks, binders, and other work can go in other drawers. If your desk does not have any, you can either buy some or stack them at the back of the desk with the binding facing you, so you can see the title/ label easily.
- On the top of your desk will be computers, laptops, printers, telephones, and other things that are used a lot. Don't stack things on top of each other, this looks untidy and is not then easy to get to. It's a good idea to keep an agenda or 'to-do' notebook on the corner of your desk to write all plans, ideas, or appointments.
- Keep it clean! There is no point cleaning your desk if you're going to dirty it every day, so once you are done with something, put it pack in it's place.
This is my brother's desk. On the top, he only needs three things: his laptop, desklamp and ipod charger. As his desk is quite small, he needs to prioritize, keeping only the things he needs on his desk. If he should need to do work by hand, he can move things around a bit to make room because there are so few things on the desk.
He has two drawers in his desk: the one on the right is the drawer he uses for pens, pencils, tape, a calculator, notepad, tip-ex, other stationary, and computer games. What he has done here is lay them all out flat so he can get to them easily and see them all. Since the drawer is not deep enough to use a cup for the pencils and pens to stand upright, he has taken a long, thin container to put them in. He doesn't keep too much of anything, he only needs one eraser, one pair of scissors, two or three pens and pencils, one ruler, one notepad, etc. If he kept too much it would get too crowded. On the left, he have separated into two sides. On the right, he keeps his homework for each week and other loose papers that go in a folder, while my work can stay out so that he is reminded of it. On the left, he have taken chargers, transformers, etc. and placed them next to each other, not overlapping.