Well, there are 2 aspects here.
One is to tidy the office
The other is to keep it tidy
So Marie Kondo (Japanese organizing consultant and author of 4 books) says,
- You only have to tidy once
- First, you have to decide what you want to discard
- Second, you have to decide what you want to keep and where you are going to keep it
- Then, daily tidying consists of using something and then putting it back in the place it lives! (these bullets are my paraphrase)
She actually says, “For the best results, I ask that you hold faithfully to the following rule: tidy in the right order. As we’ve seen, there are only two tasks involved – discarding and deciding where to keep things. Just two, but discarding must come first.” and “There are two types of tidying- ‘daily tidying’ and ‘special event tidying’, which consists of using something and putting it back in its place, will always be part of our lives as ling as we need to use clothes, books, writing materials, etc.” See her website here
I was speaking to my friend Vicky Silverthorne, she is an expert at Professional Organization and she said, “it normally takes me, with an assistant, and the client an 8 hour day to sort out one room.” Wow, that’s 24 person hours!! For one room!! And that’s just to get organized. That’s not getting the tasks done that much of the paperwork requires!!
