2024, Family, home, Uncategorized, work

Spring Cleaning

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This weekend Husband and I are going to have a shred fest, disposing of lots of unneeded documents that we sorted through and discarded last Saturday. For some reason probably having to do with all the renovation in the basement, our housekeeping has really gone south over the past 18 months.

What with Covid and our busy schedules we have had very few guests over to the house in the past couple of years. Last Sunday that changed when Husband gave a cello lesson to one of our church choir members. The aspiring cellist brought his wife along, also a choir member, and we had to do a lot of house cleaning before they came. The dust was awful, and there were countless dog nose prints on the bay window that needed to be cleaned. We even cleaned out closets and brought lots of stuff to the thrift store. We also gave the basement a good cleaning now that the renovations are completely done. We were exhausted by the time we were finished.

We really don’t have a schedule for cleaning. We just do what needs to be done when we see it. I think that when we are both fully retired it will be easier to be more intentional housekeepers. Cleaning closets is pretty low on the list, but it sure feels good when I open the closets and see the organization and fewer things. I have the same approach to cleaning and organizing my desk at work. I have a far too grand, u-shaped desk at work that allows me to have stacks of papers that get bigger and bigger and still leave me room to do my work. You can see how ridiculously big this desk is.

I also have some odd figures that I have acquired over the years that hold pride of place in one corner of the desk. You can see them in the header photo. When the paper piles start encroaching on Moishe and Sigmund, then I know it is time to file things and straighten things up.

What did or does your desk look like at work? What is your decorative style?

26 thoughts on “Spring Cleaning”

  2. I like cozy nooks. I like being surrounded by the stuff I need and am working on, which is odd since I am rather clauastrophobic. My current space is like that. I use the top of the bed in the second bedroom as part of my work area.

    My desk when I was a teacher was not very remarkable. It was neither neat nor messy.

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  3. Rise and Shine, Baboons,

    I recently left the desk that I had used for 20 years behind at the office from which I retired. When I had my HIghland practice, we expanded in 2007. I bought a desk, bookshelf and consul because I needed work space, as well as storage space. The on-going digitalization of business records during those years reduced the need for storage, but even now that everything has gone digital, there is still a need for some things in paper. I had some things displayed–stuff clients and staff gave me, reminders, etc. No Freud though. Usually it was pretty messy and dusty. Renee, I would have like the desk in the picture because I could sort paper and spread out the work space.

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  4. The kitchen is Route 66.

    The bathroom is lobster and crab.

    The bedroom is Looney Tunes.

    The living room is Birds.

    Things are a little crazy. I’ve never experienced this. Somehow my domicile has been raided by an unidentified fly. Not house flies. Not fruit flies. Not gnats. About an eighth inch long. Very slow. They go up to the ceiling and are easily crushed using a stick. Down lower, I can kill them by hand. But cleaning them up and out is a mess. So far about two dozen have died. I’d spray bomb them but that would hurt the Birds so it’s bug hunting time. Climbing a ladder is not as easy as it once was.

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    4. They could be fungus gnats. Do you have plants? I read this on a county extension site – “An effective means of detecting the presence of fungus gnat larvae is to insert 1/4 inch slices or wedges of potato into the growing medium. Larvae will migrate to the potato and start feeding within a few days.”

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  5. Once again, Trail Baboons have motivated me. Floor to ceiling cleaning with a non-toxic Bird poop cleaner. I try to clean up as I see it but it has become clear to me that I have been missing quite a bit. I don’t live in a bird-sty but behind a particular picture is admitedly embarrassing. This is work!

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  6. So is Moishe the little Viking guy, and do the 3 gnomes have gnames?

    I have usually tried to keep a desktop looking neat, because I get slightly anxious if there are too many paper piles visible.

    I am able to do this because I now have a tall narrow shelf, seems to be called a 6-Tier-Cube-Display-Rack in which I store all my notebooks and related files, some music and folk dance books, and odds and ends on top. It’s tucked into a corner of the “solarium” (former front porch) where the computer also lives, adjacent to the living room.

    My mom decorated our house in Italian Provincial (as opposed to French Provincial or Early American), and I still have one piece from that style. I call my style Early Garage-sale and Flea-Market.

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  7. They say a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind. If that’s true, what is an empty desk a sign of?

    From my five years at KPMG, I observed mainly two different work styles: The spreaders, and the stackers. The woman who was in charge of “alumni relations” was an extreme stacker.

    Georgine had an incredible memory. She knew everyone who had ever worked in the Minneapolis office, remembered their name, and kept track of all kinds of information about them subsequent their leaving KPMG.

    The credenza behind her desk had stacks of paper, two feet high, covering the entire top surface, and there were several similar stacks on her desk, as well. Georgine set her own office hours, and typically didn’t come in till late in the afternoon, and she’d work till midnight. If you needed to get in contact with someone, it was a sure bet that she could dive into one of her stacks and retrieve a piece of paper that would have the needed information. I have no idea how she did it, but it was pretty impressive.

    My own work/desk style was a combination of stacks and spreading papers all over the desk, depending what I was working on. Not particularly efficient, but somehow that’s what I reverted to, no matter how hard I tried to be better organized. I was no Georgine, that’s for sure.

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  8. I never had a desk but it would have been very organized and neat. Each baby on the NICU had a bedside cart with supplies. The top drawer was for “personal” stuff. The other drawers were for supplies such as syringes, needles, feeding tubes, IV supplies, and linens. I couldn’t begin cares until the cart was organized to my liking.

    My condo is decorated mostly with purchases from international travel – quite a few framed items, smaller items displayed in a glass fronted curio. None of it is cluttered. Most people who have been to my place say it barely looks lived in because it is so organized and neat. That is not to say that there is never a mess – but messes don’t last too long.

    OT: The trip to Oman and the UAE was wonderful – though traveling in planes for 17 hours going and 19 hours coming back was not fun. There was a ton of walking – my ankle held up pretty well though I was the slowest walker of our group of 17. I did skip three activities that would have been tough on my foot. In Oman we did do a hot air balloon ride over sand dunes. And in Dubai we did view the city from the 124th floor of the Burj Khalid (currently world’s tallest building at 163 floors and nearly a half mile high). The skyline of Dubai makes New York City look puny by comparison. And the city is spotlessly clean.

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      1. It has to do with how the building was constructed. I don’t know or understand the details. You can google Burj Khalifa and read the Wikipedia entry for details of it’s construction. I do believe the upper part of the building does sway some in the wind.

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  10. After working for a cluttered desk person for 30+ years, I have to disagree with the “cluttered desk, cluttered mind” trope. It looks crazy-making but if she needs something, she knows where it is. 

    When I had a work desk, I kept it very neat; I also had a collection in my cube. Mostly small items that I’d collected over the years, many from my travels. Small ceramic Tang horse from China, llama from Peru, two beaded animals from South Africa (from different trips), little stuffed buffalo/bison from Wyoming,two sets of toritos from Peru. Pretty much all these items survived my retirement clean-up and have moved to my bedroom and some to my studio.

    My current desk in my studio is FULL but organized. Whenever I finish work in there, I always clean everything up and put everything away. 

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