During Small Business Week this year (October 17-22, 2011) we organized a “Messiest Desk in Quinte West” contest. We had a lot of great entries and we’d like to thank everyone who entered the contest this year.
This year’s winner was Angela. Angela’s messy desk is actually a counter in her kitchen. Her home is too small to have a designated office space from which to run her business. Actually, there are two businesses that run out of Angela’s home, her business (daycare) and her husband’s business and they both use this space. Oh, and I must mention that Angela home schools her children and her home school uses this space. So if you’re wondering – YES that is a LOT of activity to be happening on such a small piece of counter.
The first challenge was to find an appointment time to help Angela. Because Angela manages a daycare during the week, we had to find some time on the weekend to get her organized. After a few weeks we made the appointment and started to work.
The first step was to sort all of the information. We used some laundry baskets and empty plastic bins to create the following categories:
- home schooling supplies (notebooks, pens, markers, glue)
- reference information (for children with special needs)
- family information (photographs, souvenirs, artwork of her own children)
- scheduling & contact information (appointment reminders, friends’ contact info)
- her business paperwork
- his business paperwork
As we were sorting, we also made some decisions on what would stay and what would go. We filled several bags for recycling with old art projects, envelopes and paper with outdated information.
Since we had several enthusiastic “little helping hands” we put them to work testing pens, pencils and markers. Any writing implement that didn’t work went right into the garbage! The children also sorted them into groups of pens, coloured pencils and markers. The also examined all the craft supplies. Several bottles of dried up glue made their way to the garbage as did some old feathers and other bits and pieces.
It doesn’t take long to organize blank paper. It can be sorted by size, colour and thickness. Paper that has information written on it takes significantly longer to organize because you have to READ it. But, after 3 hours the desk was clean, the papers were in their proper piles and all of the unwanted material was in the trash or recycle bin.
Angela and family have a bit more work to do on their own filing some of the piles of papers but at least now they have a strategy and some parameters in which to guide them.
Check out the pictures below!
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