Office Organization Tips

By the middle if the semester, my poor, beautiful, perfectly organized, perfectly categorized office shelves look like this:

...Random clutter is stacked all over once-empty surfaces…

...on top of more random clutter…

…with papers are overflowing into my Charger Bin…

...and all of my other bins…

...and my "helpful" sticky notes and task pads (you know, the ones to help me STAY organized) are sloppily thrown all over the place…

Welcome to life after midterms. 

It makes me a little sick (and annoyed) to have all of this clutter and messiness randomly strewn across my office! And needless to day, I had to fix it before I could get one more assignment finished (which meant I had about a day). 

So I spent Sunday afternoon reorganizing it all. And let me tell you that PHOTOGRAPHING those messy parts of the room that were driving me crazy was great motivation to complete it!

I just put on some music and gave myself about an hour.

I started with taking out everything that didn't belong.

Then I sorted what DID belong so that I could return it to its home or give it a new home (and yes, I consider the recycling bin a "new home").

I emptied and set out all of my bins to see if there was a way to better utilize them for my needs this semester (there was). 

And then I just started to put things back, starting with what was most important. 

A bin for Textbooks, notebooks, and other important school supplies.

A bin for thing to write on (or on which to write…whatever).

A bin for writing utensils and other small office supplies. 

Only chargers and electronic accessories in the Charger Bin again (YAY!).

And a bin for my planners, notebook, and task pads. 

(my 4 planners are on the left, notebooks in the middle, task pads on the right)

And there they are! My newly reorganized (newly dusted) shelves are back to how they should be!

Until Finals Week, that is :) 

How do you retrieve your sanity after a couple of busy weeks? 

Does it involve organizing or some other relaxing activity?