by Denise Russos

Created on: June 01, 2008   Last Updated: June 13, 2011

Have you lost your mind? I asked my kids one day when I found food on the keyboard, water spilled next to the hard drive and food wrappers on the floor in the office! Even organized people have to deal with those less organized. And as an organizing consultant it frustrates me to live with disorganization. I am not obsessive compulsive about it, but I need to find my invoices, and my notes for the book I am writing when I need them. So how to keep your desk organized with multiple personalities making use of the area is the question.

1. Make sure you have the right tools.

Among these are your waste basket, letter trays for your in, out, and to be filed papers, your file cabinet for those papers you never need to look at unless something major happens, your desktop files for the files you see every day or week, your shredder.

Having the right tools for you are essential in keeping your area free from clutter. But does it help if your family or co-workers who use your desk are not as organized as you?

2. Having rules about how you use the area is the second step in being organized.

Your desk is not the kitchen table. It is not a place where you should eat your lunch. Why? Ulcers, eating too fast causes intestinal distress, and eventually the boss will expect you to just not take a lunch.

One of these rules needs to be that your desk should always remain neat. This step requires you to have several desk maintenance periods. When you get to work in the morning your desk should be clear. During the day you work on multiple projects and papers could get mixed up, and lost if you do not maintain them. As you finish working on a file, papers should be put back into their folders and put away. If you are not done with them have a desktop file holder that can contain those papers until you can work on them again. Each time you stop working on a project, a file or just a report make sure they are put in their proper folders so you can find them later. Just putting them down on the desk is not acceptable. The biggest benefit to this is that you will always know where the papers are. Your co-workers will be able to find the files they are looking for if you are not available with very simple instructions.

A second rule is that before you leave work for the day you must follow rule number one. Your desk should be cleared of all work. Every paper should be put into its' proper folder and put either in your desktop hanging file (Action Files) where anyone can find them, or

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