Clearing the Clutter
When you work at home, you tend to work amid clutter, especially if you have children. It is just about impossible to keep little hands from depositing stuffed animals in your lap, half-eaten crackers on your desk and dragging all manner of cars and coloring books into the office to leave laying around on the floor!
Is there any way to stop the invasion of mess? Once your children are old enough to understand, you can start trying to train them to keep their toys in the toy area (a corner of the living room or in their rooms), but in general, you probably won’t be able to halt the inflow of things!
Hope is not lost, however. There are methods to control the clutter and keep it from taking over your desk. One such way is to have a bulletin board beside your computer. Here, any and all artwork that is brought in can be stuck up immediately and admired, leaving kids happy and you without mounds of papers on your desk.
Having a basket is handy for all those extra toys. A nice big laundry basket is best if you have either two or more children or a LOT of toys! Keep it in a corner near your desk and when those stuffed animals and cars start to pile up around your feet, toss them all into the basket for putting away later. This doesn’t eliminate the mess, but it does keep it contained. The basket can be used for everything from books and Barbies to weird stones and empty tissue boxes that somehow find their way onto your lap.
If you stick to a small desk that is just big enough for your computer, you will also find that your kids will have a harder time loading it up with things (although they will still try!). Clear everything out of the office area each night, even if that just means putting it all into a box to deal with tomorrow. There’s nothing worse than sitting down in a disaster area in the morning, it just ruins any motivation you might have had!
Feel free to add your clutter control tips here, please! We could all use more ideas!
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