Decluttering the office

You are going to be so proud of me! I'm so proud of me! 

OK -- before being proud, I'm pretty embarrassed, and I think I should preface what I'm about to share with you with this statement: 

My name is Elaine, and I am a hoarder! 

This all started because we were pulling samples for Quilt Canada, and one of my colleagues always has labels on all her samples. I have to blame someone, and she gets the blame today! Although this blame is a POSITIVE thing. She uses laminated business cards. So the question was, did I have business cards, or would I need to buy some? Could I use paper or some other form of paper and pre-cut them? 

I bought laminating sheets (a few that self-laminate and some that need a machine). Our new central library has a laminating machine for the public to use. I managed to find the laminating sheets at Wal-Mart. But what about cards? I've been mulling that over on the walks and decided I might need something slightly larger than a business card. I wasn't sure, and Wal-Mart didn't have business cards, so I would have to go to Staples. 

I was certain I already had blank business cards, but where were they? I knew they would be in the office supply cabinet if I had some. 

So, yesterday morning, I opened the doors. ACK!!! While everything was in one place, that's pretty scary, and let's say that it was hard to find anything in there, and there literally was no more room. 

The office supply cabinet

So, I tackled one shelf at a time. I was only going to go as far as finding those business cards. I started by putting stuff on a chair, which was silly. 

Starting to unload the cabinet

Only office supplies were supposed to be in that cabinet, but I found two pieces of office clutter. Look at the date!!! I'm sure I will find a lot of that kind of thing in the rest of the office. And did you notice that I seem to gravitate to the areas behind doors in this space? I can't seem to tackle the visual clutter sitting on the tables! Well, I am, but it's slow going. 

In the recycling!

I found an empty wrapper of printer paper. Seriously? 

Why?

I found some cute little cards for messages I probably bought to put in M's lunch. 

The front

The back

I had quite a few. There were two different messages, and I found some other inspirational cards later on. 

A pile of those little cards

OK—so I started on one shelf, which progressed to two, then three, and soon (OK—several hours later), the cabinet was EMPTY!!! Doesn't it give you a good feeling to see an empty cabinet? The old me would have been trembling to see all my precious stuff out of the cabinet, but the new me was excited, and I couldn't stop. 

The cabinet is empty

Here are some of the treasures I found. 

I know you're asking yourself, how many office supplies does one household need, and what was in there? Journals and notebooks, along with the office supplies. I had a thing for journals, and shockingly, I had several of the same kind! Some of them were generic ones, but some of them either had a bicycle or sewing theme or were orange. How many journals does one person need? 

What's even worse is that I went through them, and often, I found something written on the first page—and that was it! Not all—I'll say that 90% of the journals were brand new, and some are still in their original wrapping. 

I wasn't going to throw out a perfectly good journal, so I ripped out the pages with crap on them. I had two piles - one from M and one from me. M's is in the recycling, and I'll go through my small pile in greater detail because I question my sanity when I quickly glance at some of the writing. Remember -- this is all about me and my memories and then it can go! 

What I ripped from the journals

But the piles of what I ripped out are small, as you can see above. Some of M's stuff was cute. Look—she made a quilt pattern for me. 

A quilt pattern for Mom!

I found packages of decorative writing pads, and if anyone would like them, they are yours! I don't know if they would be good for journal making, as many of them are directional in the portrait style, but I don't want any of them. 

Sheets of decorative paper for the printer

Yes -- I did find office supplies and some photo paper. That stuff I kept for the moment. 

Some actual office supplies

Did I find business cards? So help me, but yes, I found business cards. In fact, I found at least five bundles of them. If I had rushed to Staples to buy more, I would have kicked myself to the curb!

Business cards

There were several tubs in the cabinet, and one of them was filled with block pads of paper—most of them never opened. OH GOSH --- some of this stuff dates back to the days when I worked for Hewlett Packard, and I haven't worked there in over 25 years! I had an entire stack of paper with my name on it, as we used to handwrite notes on documentation. I kept that since it had my name on it, but so much of it went. 

Blocks of note paper

OK -- so I know you're asking yourself - what the heck did I do with the stuff? I had already started a donation box, which I found in the pile of boxes in the office. That pile was temporary, and I've been keeping any decent-sized boxes so I could use them as donation boxes. 

A donation box was already started

The kitchen looked like this at one point, and it was bad - there was stuff everywhere. I attempted to deal with the giveaway stuff as I decided what to keep and what to toss. 

The keep pile

At the end of that exercise, I had EIGHT boxes of stuff for donation. I'm going to call my local school and ask if they want the boxes of office supplies, which are mostly sketchbooks, journals, school notebooks, loose-leaf paper, pads of paper—both lined and graph—and little notepads. The white box on the wall is for the thrift store. 

Boxes for donation

Can you believe that? Why do I get myself into these messes? I swear every time I spotted a cute journal, I purchased it, even if I already had the same one at home. It was a disease, and I know that I went shopping for something to do. I wasn't always happy to stay at home for the entire day, so retail shopping was my therapy. Thank goodness, I've curbed that habit!!!

I found some cord name clips. I found TWO packages of the darn things. Who knew that I already had something that I needed.  They are in the basket of cords, and I'll deal with naming them later. 

Cord naming devices

Speaking of business cards, I also found boxes of my business cards. Seriously? How many does one person need? I haven't dealt with those yet. 

Already printed business cards

The clean-up job took about four hours from start to finish. Once a donation box was filled, it was hauled to the front hall to lessen the mess in the kitchen. I had sorted it into piles as I went, so putting it back in the cupboard was easy. 

The after!!!

Oh, my God! Does that even look like the same cupboard? Did you notice there is ONE completely empty shelf? I can't put anything on it at the moment as it's missing one support. BUT I have a bag of them in a closet in the basement, and I know exactly where they are!!!

There are TWO shelves of blank journals! I will never use that many in my life, but for the moment, I'm keeping them. I think I'm allowed after everything else that I gave away. I thought it might be hard, but my mind was now set on cleaning up the mess, so it was much easier than I thought it would be. 

Do not judge me! This cabinet can definitely be reviewed again, but for the moment, it stays the way it is. 

One shelf is devoted to envelopes, one to sketchbooks, two to journals, one to printer paper, one to random stuff like empty folders and business cards, and one to small pads of paper. 

While it was extremely satisfying to see the amount of empty room in the cabinet, there was nothing more satisfying than closing the door and ACTUALLY hearing CLICK as the doors were able to shut properly. 

The doors can shut properly!

OK—I confess that I went into the office and opened that door several times to survey my work and to hear that click!!! 

I didn't tackle the top of the cupboard - perhaps today, but it's stuff I want to keep, and now that there is an empty shelf, once I get the support, I can eliminate everything on the top. 

The top is next

And so, without any thought, that cupboard in the office is done! I must survey the other areas and see what goes next. NO -- I need to take the same amount of time and tackle either the desktop or the table top and do the same thing. Most of what I find will be tossed in the garbage or recycled, and it's going to take longer and have less visual impact, but it must be done. 

While I'm super excited about what happened, I can't believe I accumulated that much stuff. But we're going to move on—there's no sense lamenting what we can't change. The most important thing from that is to learn never to do that again. 

Does anyone need some help? I'm getting pretty ruthless these days, and I can talk you out of keeping most things!

Now for those hooks, I purchased the other day. This is what they look like, and their job is to connect those metal shelving units to each other. In the case of warehouse storage. 

New metal hooks

What I used them for is to hang my digital cutter mats!! They are very sturdy, so I can easily hang multiple mats on one hook. Since I can access the back of this shelf as well, I'm going to purchase another box of hooks and hang ALL the mats up. Currently, they are stored on the top shelf.

Hanging the digital cutter mats

Gosh—I love when things come together, and the more you play with decluttering, the easier it becomes. On my walks, I think about possible storage places. I will say that I LOVE this storage shelf for all the bits of my embroidery and sewing machines. It's all in one place, it's easy to get to, it's large enough, and it was the best $100 I spent. 

If you are looking for this type of shelving, DO NOT buy new. Many warehouses are going out of business or replacing their shelving; tons of it can be found on Facebook Marketplace—at least in my area. 

Some are assembled, so you'll need a van to move them, or some are already apart. I want to buy two more shelves as I have another problem area and didn't know how to address it. But when I thought of these shelving units (on wheels), that was the answer to my problem. I hope to get that resolved in the next couple of weeks. 

On that note, I'm off to spin class this morning!! I'm so excited. That's because of my cleaning. Imagine what I'll be like when the entire office is done!!!

Have a super day!!!

Ciao!!!!