I’ve been avoiding this postmodern bane mostly because of the ridiculous amount of office products I own.

It’s embarrassing—how much stuff I’ve accumulated over the years. So I’ve been going through every single box and container and scrutinizing every individual item as to whether it’s worth keeping, storing, tossing, or donating. I started at the bookcase and worked in a circle around the room. The bookcase was easy, but I got stuck on the closet for a few days—several days. It was scary.

There were times where I had to sit down and just stare at nothing. I got lost in all the paper. I found the lawn goose‘s bee costume and started to laugh to myself, quietly.

What person needs over 60 spiral notebooks? Over 20 binders? A storage bag full of pens of every type?

In one box I found my external flash I thought was lost. In another box I found old pay stubs from jobs I had in high school. I also went through the box of stuff from college and significantly reduced its size.

On the left is paper to be recycled, on the right shredded:

George is close to getting buried by all the paper:

While I can’t be sure, I’m thinking I was part of the reason why my alma mater instituted a printing cap my junior year:

I’ve now made it to my main desk. There are two and half boxes full of the crap that had been on my desk (and on top of the bookcase and strewn about in general–I’m a stacker) that I’m not sure what to do with. I’ll be shutting down the computer later to give it a thorough cleaning and then I’ll reconstruct my desk.

This shit’s insane.

Part of me is SO FUCKING RELIEVED to be rid of so much stuff, but the other part is saying “You can’t give that away! What if you need it in five years?!”

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Relieved to toss:

These PAPER NOTECARDS were a requirement for an “educational technology” course I took when I was contemplating changing my major to social studies education. I am still so fucking pissed they had us make a PAPER VERSION of a souped-up POWERPOINT PRESENTATION, this thing they call a “web quest” (or the thing I call “Student Busy Work for Lazy-ass Teachers”). PAPER?!

And this, this is a PAPER FLOWCHART of the presentation, also required. This was one of the top three worst classes ever endured.

It is beautiful.

Right now, however, there is a large stack of papers on my desk that needs to be shredded but other than that it has stayed clean. On Monday I started Phase Two of Office Cleaning 2007, which includes very generally, the entire floor: the shit under the second table that has been piling up for months, the shit in front of the bookcases, and the shit that I’ve been stacking in the back corner. Don’t stack stuff in corners, folks; the stacks only seem to grow with time.

As per The David’s suggestions and GTD, I collected everything into one area and then started the task of processing. I had to process all this shit four times because I had so much paper stuff that needed to be filed in multiple places, thrown away, or shredded.

It was not fun.

But I got it done.

Ever wanted to know what four years’ worth of class notes looks like?

Left to be cleaned are the bookcases, the shit on top of the second table, and those very scary closets. Then the rest of the house. Eek!

This is all to say: I’ve been slacking on the cleaning. Luckily, we all know I’m a world-class procrastinator so we saw it coming. I got myself in gear and started tackling the office this (Thursday) afternoon.

Look at the horror:

It is so bad.

Obviously, I’m a stacker. That’s my method — I just stack things on top of other things. Sometimes they’re related, sometimes not.

Folks, my method ain’t workin’ so well.

A few months back I found a site through a site from another site (oh, Internets) dealing with productivity. I’m a productivity whore, even though the pictures say otherwise. I’m also an office supply pornstar, so I was looking into the hPDA and came across The David’s Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity. I borrowed my local library’s copy, read the first four chapters, and then went out and bought the book. Yes, it is a cult. No, you don’t have to move to a compound or be one of fourteen wives to some whacked-out dude with a Jesus complex. You just have to buy a couple stacking trays, a box of manila folders, and a label maker. It’s awesome.

To implement the GTD method, The David says to clear at least two consecutive days off your schedule in which to do it with no interruptions. This is not a problem for me, although the dog needs to go out every now and then. The first part is Collection — one of the stacking trays is your in-box and you collect every single thing (papers, mail, books, the bottle of nail polish that’s been under your keyboard for weeks, that container of peanuts that’s been on your desk since February) that is not where it should be and put it in the in-box. If you’re like me you’ll find you have too much shit to fit into a dinky tray and so you must put all the shit on the floor next to the desk on which the tray sits. Once everything is collected you start part two, which is to Process all that shit, one item at a time. There’s this whole workflow to it.

My problem, well, my two problems are (1) I share the office with The Partner and (2) I have a lot of shit. For my situation, I’ll be collecting and processing at least four times (maybe five). I’m not some CEO with papers and printed emails; I was a university student with notebooks and textbooks and yarns strewn about/under my desk. In order for The Partner to be able to walk to his desk, I have to do this chunk-by-chunk. I’m starting with my desk/work area and then I’ll move on to The Table That Just Collects Shit and/then the bookcases, finishing with the closets. The fucking closets. They scare me.

So far I’ve collected everything from my work area into an overflowing pile on the floor that is giving me hives every time I look at it/step over it. I cleaned the desk surface and my desktop PC, which I hadn’t done in over six months. While The Partner was installing my new DVD-R drive (I only have 18G free out of 80) and sucking out all the hair from the fans and vents (we have two cats), I meticulously cleaned every crevice of my keyboard and went crazy with the magic erasers. The shit shines.

I did do a tiny bit of processing, though: I pulled out some things that are specifically staying on the desk and the rest I’ll get to later, after I’ve gone to bed for several hours and woken up when the sun is warm[2].

I must never again let the office explode and computer cleaning must be upped to every three months.

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[1] Someone actually created gingerkids.org: International Ginger Kids Foundation. I’m totally buying this shirt for her.

[2] Bill Murray I love you.

I downloaded Launchbar, which made me giggle with pleasure. But soon I started getting a popup warning me that I had a limited number of uses unless I registered/paid. I ignored it and kept on using Launchbar to open applications, find files, and open URLs, among it’s many other uses.

Tonight I was searching the web in an attempt to find out how to get a keyboard shortcut for iTunes in order to skip to the next song without my having to be on the application itself. I came across this post on Scott McDaniel’s blog and gave Quicksilver a try.

While the steps to get it to handle iTunes shortcuts have changed a bit with the recent version (much easier now), Quicksilver certainly kicks much ass, doing everything Launchbar was doing for me, plus some.

I’m a relatively new Mac convert, but if you’re on a Mac and haven’t tried Quicksilver, do so and be happy.

I’ve got a thesis due in about 19 days and my brain is wobbling. That is to say, posting will be random and sparse until I can once again sleep without having nightmares about literature reviews and standard deviations.