This is a
great video about the connection people have to their desks. Whether messy or minimalist, everyone seems to need a desk, a small place that is theirs and
only theirs.
Once upon a time, I thrived on a messy desk (or thought I did). Somewhere along the line, I evolved into someone who works best with a desk cleared of as much as possible.
I keep my desk pretty clear at work. Although a few sticky notes find their way to the bottom of my monitors, I try to keep those at a minimum. If I could clear the CPU, inbox and phone off, I would. I used to have the CPU on the floor, but it just wasn't practical there. The inbox could probably be eliminated since 90% of the time it holds my timesheet and nothing else. The phone, well, I'd love to get rid of it altogether (Hate phone calls! Love email, instant messaging and text messaging!) but that's not likely to happen since this is still the real world. I keep a sticky note pad, a small pile of scratch paper, and a pile of forms for taking payment information on my desktop since I often need to grab them in a hurry, otherwise they'd be in a drawer. In fact, even the drawers are mostly empty now.
I'm currently a bit of a desk nomad at home. A few months ago, I cleaned out "the office slash guest room" to make it just a guest room, so the big desk has moved downstairs to the room I'm currently using as a sorting and staging area for "The Great Purge." At the moment, the room is still full of boxes from cleaning out closets, the garage, the guest room and LilGirl's room. Once I'm done purging all the stuff, I'll have the desk (under a big south-facing window!) to write at and a table at a right angle to that for sewing and other crafts. I promise pictures when it's ready. For now, I work at a little folding table in front of the couch (my big sound-cancelling headphones are a godsend), at the kitchen table, or at hubby's desk for a few things I can only do on his computer. This digital nomad-like existence is part of the reason I work so much in the cloud. I don't know where I'm going to land, but I still need to access all my stuff and get to work as quickly as possible. In a way, the internet (especially my
Gmail) is my desk. In fact, I finished up this post at my daughter's basketball practice. I keep working toward the day I can "settle down" at a single desk at home.
What's your desk like? Messy? Clean? Somewhere in between (is there such a thing in anyone's head?) Let me know in the comments!
