My colleague's desk - before and after pics

This is my colleague's desk. He sits directly behind me - you can see my desk is in exactly the same location.

Notice the piles on the floor. Every evening he moves the piles onto the desk so the cleaning ladies don't throw it all away.

Anyway, I try not to tease him too much about his messy desk but the other guys have no such qualms. In fact, his line manager regularly asks me to help him "sort it all out". To which I reply, "sorry, I only work with people who want to change" :)

So in typical guy fashion, they bet him that he wouldn't be able to sort it all out in a week. And in typical guy fashion, he rose to the occasion and did it.

It looks a MILLION times better and I'm so proud of him. It really made my heart proud and he did it within the deadline (I think my camera said 3.22 pm on a Friday afternoon). Just goes to show what you can do when you put your mind to it because he did it in about 2 hours.

10-minute clutter hacks - OFFICE

Don't you wish you had more time to finally organise your office?

Sorry to disappoint you but opportunities rarely come along gift-wrapped in HUGE chunks of 2 or 3 hours :)

So what's the next best thing?

Using up the little bits of time you do find!

What are some of the things you can do in your home or work office in 10 minutes?

1. throw away all the dry markers and pens that don't work
2. tidy your desk
3. declutter a pile of paper
4. file a pile of paper
5. conquer your email
6. make a list of office supplies you need to buy
7. pay some bills
8. weed through a file
9. organise your library books
10. declutter your bookshelf

What other tasks can you do in your office in 10 minutes?

The winner of the TIDY DESK competition is...

Well, this has been such fun - I think I'll have to do this again soon...

First, I want to thank all of you for participating. It has been such fun for me to see the transformations and the different ways each of us organise our workspaces.

I feel so much better knowing that there are lovely, tidy desks out there - I hope that you guys do too!

I chose the winner because

1. the desk looks and functions well
2. there's a place for everything
3. her files are labelled (I LOVE labels)
4. she followed all the steps (I even checked back on the blog and I see she declutters regularly)
5. tweaked the solutions until it fitted her (organising is not a one-stop shop)
6. she will maintain this (when I helped Laura judge the Organising Challenge in May, I also looked out for entries that I felt would be maintained. Laura, what happened to that laundry lady? I always remember those flowers!)
7. BONUS - she found stuff she thought she'd lost

Karen at Pediascribe, you're the WINNER! Please go over and say congratulations to Karen. And go visit the other participants' desks too because everyone did a wonderful job! I loved all Lu's colourful things on her desk even though I can't read a word of the Portuguese!

Karen, I'm emailing your prize to you right now.

For the rest of you, I'm giving you R20 off the Your organised home - basic pack so you only pay R50.

Go to the store, click on e-courses and pay for the Take Charge of your Success e-course which is R50. Then email me and tell me what you bought.

The reason I'm being lazy is because it's date night (we're going to see No Reservations) and I don't have time to go create new discount coupons right now. I know you'll forgive me :)