Spring Cleaning

Well, let's just say I owed someone a favor and she asked me (the anal-retentive person that I am) to help her clean her desk. And by 'help,' I mean drag papers back and forth to her to see if I could throw them away. Then, with a shake of her head, she'd decide and I'd get back to work. Behold, the before:

And this is what I did. I started by clearing all of the junk off and onto her kitchen table. Then I used her vacuum and cleaning supplies to give it a good scrub.

After that, I began to put things back and decided that she needed a little bulletin board, so I rushed home, grabbed one of the million frames I have in my closet as well as some pretty paper, and stuck it all together, along with some corkboard.

Then, it was finding appropriate yet aesthetically pleasing ways to hide all of the clutter that would inevitably accumulate after I left.

I cleaned out the drawers, but also found this pretty box in her basement for stamps and her iPod that she uses frequently.

The most important thing when you organize yourself is not only to find places for things, but also to throw them out. She had random receipts from years ago and millions of little papers with illegible scribbles on them. The second important thing is to think of everything that you use and find a place for it, such as the bulletin board, stamp/iPod box, and tasteful calendar (below), that I bought as a gift for her from The Elegant Setting in Southampton.

I also reorganized her letter caddies so that they would never become so full again.

Finally, we spent hours going through this little filer, discarding old documents and putting the ones we were keeping into appropriate places.

Above all, when Spring cleaning, be merciless!