Organizing office supplies

One trouble that my clients tend to have when they try to start getting organized is that they have difficulty finding the very supplies they need for organizing!  For instance, when we are about to work on their papers, I ask them if they have file folders, and they know they have some somewhere, but they don’t remember where they put them.  I ask them if they have a stapler when we need to staple some papers together, and they don’t know where the stapler is.   So a ten-minute hunt ensues.  And if the staples run out, then comes another hunt trying to find where the box of extra staples is.  Finding a pen is a struggle.  Finding where their sticky notes are is a struggle.  They might remember where their stamps are, but they can’t find them because they are buried under papers and other things.   Envelopes? No idea.  When it takes ten minutes to find the paper clips, anyone would rather go buy a new box rather than spend so much time searching for them!

What is the problem here?  The problem is that there is no one place they can go to find ALL their office supplies.   The solution is to gather all office supplies together into one place and keep them together.   This is the consolidation process.  It’s like making your own tiny office supply store. 

Here’s what office supplies I have:

Writing

Mechanical pencils, lead for mechanical pencils

Wooden pencils, pencil sharpener

Pens

highlighters

markers

paper fastening

Tape

Double-sided tape (I use this more than I ever thought I would)

Stapler, box of extra staples, staple remover

Paper clips

Binder clips  (less used)

Glue

Thumb tacks (which I hardly use, since I don't have a bulletin board)

Paper cutting

Scissors

3-hole paper punch

rotary cutter (incredibly useful and fast!)

rotary cutting board

mailing

Stamps

envelopes

blank cards that can be sent as thank you notes

printable mailing labels (hardly used)

paper

printer paper

notebook paper

sticky notes

graph paper (my husband is an engineer and I took engineering classes as well)

letterhead paper (hardly used)

paper organization

manila folders

hanging file folders

notebooks

two-pocket folders

binder page dividers

binders

Paper saving

laminating plastic

plastic page protectors

Business

business cards

box of checks

Misc.

graphing calculator (from school)

Ruler

Art supplies (not required for office..)

Crayons

Paints

Paintbrushes

Paint palate

Colored pencils

Markers

Stamp markers

Pastel color sticks (hardly used)

Spray clear coat

Glitter

The above list is what I have.  Please don’t take it as a list of supplies that you must have because you may not need everything I have listed.  You also might need additional things that I have not listed.  The point is that if the supplies are all gathered together, then you will most likely find what you need more quickly for just about any office task.

So, how do you consolidate your office supplies?  Well, you have to find them, so go seek them out.  They might be in little stashes about the house, so go to all your secret stashes of office supplies and put them together in a box.  Sometimes you might think you’ve got them all and then you’ll run into another little pile of them somewhere else that you forgot about.  Put those in the box too. 

It might be tempting to go out and buy containers to organize your office supplies at the very beginning of your search.  I would recommend waiting until you’re reasonably sure that you found just about everything because you’ll want to get containers that match as nearly as possible the amount of supply you have.  It would not be fun to get a container that perfectly holds your markers and later find.. three more stashes of markers.   (I know this happens!)

Consolidating all your office supplies will make every office task you do much faster.  You’ll be able to staple, mail, file, label, tape, tack, write, and more with blinding speed, and dealing with paper will be easier and faster too!  Further, you'll save money since you won't have to buy more of the supplies you know you have but can't find!

In my next post, I will talk about sorting, testing, and storing your office supplies.

 


Do you need extra help with organizing and de-cluttering? Hire me! Go to www.phoenixhomeorganizing.com for more information about my services! Did this article help you? Be sure to share it with your friends!

De-cluttering journals

When a loved one dies, their journals are a priceless artifact that allows their memory to live on.  However, there are different difficulties that can crop up in deciding who gets to keep the journals. 

If there is only one journal and more than one person who is interested in having it, the best method would be to hire someone to type up the journal so that others can have copies. 

If the departed was a prolific journal-writer, the solution can be as simple as dividing the journal volumes up among those interested, however, a new problem also arises: no one person has a copy of the whole story.  There are several solutions for this:

·      Someone could read through all the journals and create a condensed life narrative incorporating the most important events in the life of the deceased so that everyone can get a bird’s eye view.  (Huge project!) 

·      Another solution would be to create a blog that is accessible only to the family, to type of the journals, and upload them onto the blog so that everyone in the family can read them. (Also a huge project!)

·      Another solution might be for each party that has a journal to type up a condensed version of the important events in the journal they have and then compile those summaries together with the others to share with each person. 

·      Another solution might be to ask everyone to pass their journal on to the next person who has a journal so that eventually everyone can read the whole story.  Perhaps a schedule can be made of when to pass the journal on.

I went looking online to see what other people thought about de-cluttering journals and it turns out there is a wide segment of the population that has journalled faithfully through their life and would be “absolutely mortified” if anyone else read what they wrote from their teens and twenties.  (Yes, “absolutely mortified” is the phrase that is universally used.)  Evidently this wide segment of the population has used their journals mostly as a place to vent their anger and frustration and as a place to record the lurid details of their love lives.

So, if you are one of these people, you may wonder how to deal with your journals.  

1. Try looking at your journal as if from the perspective of your great-great-grandson or great-great-granddaughter who knows nothing of you personally except what they’ve been told by their parents or grandparents.  Try looking at it from the perspective of someone who views your present as the distant past and who wonders what it was like to live in “that age.” 

2. For the sake of this distant person, try to select the best things from your journal that you can isolate from the dross and pass on.

3. Read through your journals with a highlighter and outline all the sections that you feel are worth keeping.  If you have more good than bad, tear out the bad or scribble over it with a heavy black marker and tape paper over it.  If you have very little that is good, tear out the good sections to keep and burn the rest of the journal. 

4. Consider producing an “edited” version of your journal.  Feel free to cross things out and write in the margins telling how you look back on this and realize how you wish you had acted or reacted differently and why.  Share what lessons you learned from the experience.  Your experience is not wasted if it helps someone else keep from making the same mistakes you did.

Do you need extra help with organizing and de-cluttering? Hire me! Go to www.phoenixhomeorganizing.com for more information about my services! Did this article help you? Be sure to share it with your friends!