Day #3 Hotspot Challenge | Home Office / Desk / Paperwork {Results}

Good evening! Are you still with me for the Hotspot Challenge?

I have heard from a number of you that this day is proving to be especially challenging! Paperwork is tough, because we don’t want to toss anything that might be important, whether that’s tax forms, insurance forms, medical records, etc.

On the other hand, we can so easily get buried under an avalanche of paperwork, that digging out from it feels like a seemingly impossible task.

That’s why it’s so important with this challenge in particular to SET THAT TIMER.

Work fast and furious – for 20 minutes.

And then walk away.

Success begets success, so let yourself enjoy some small (quick) wins, before you head back into it.

Having said that, let me share a quick update on my home office hotspot progress. As I said earlier today, my home office is actually in pretty decent shape. (My back kitchen, on the other hand, was most definitely not!)

A big part of this is that I really try to stay on top of the daily maintenance tasks in my office – mainly because I’m so sensitive to distraction from a cluttered workspace. I’m not saying it’s perfect, but it never gets totally unruly.

Helping in that vain is that years ago, I switched over to a (mostly) paperless office. It was a (many) months-long process, but the efforts were definitely worth it for me.

Today, I determined to process the paper that had been piling up in my inbox; I set my timer for 20 minutes and got to it. It went surprisingly fast – I recycled a few items and scanned the rest that needed to be kept. I even managed to pull together all the year-end tax documents my accountant has been nudging me about (I had seriously been procrastinating doing that!)

In just over 23 minutes, I whittled down the inbox from this:

to this:

CELEBRATE!!!

The paper-clipped receipts on top of the inbox are the year-end tax stuff. The bright yellow file underneath, labeled “current month”, is where I keep all the receipts I need to hand over to our bookkeeper at the end of each month.

Beneath the yellow folder are three clear plastic files – one for each kid – with their grade cards and tests. I could probably store them somewhere else, but since I add to those files fairly often, I don’t mind keeping them in the inbox.

Finally I took a few “bonus” minutes (definitely beyond my 20 minutes) to use my all-time favorite “home decorating tool” – Command Strips. Are you familiar with this awesomeness?

I used it today to hang up some pictures that had been leaning on (and falling off) the top of my desk for months.

{Aside: I first tried a package of Command Strips from Target, but once I realized how much I loved them, I started buying in bulk at Amazon!}

Last but not least, I ended my day by checking off items on my Daily Chores Checklist – focusing in particular on the “maintenance” chores for the entryway, kitchen and, now, the office.

It’s super helpful to have a simple and non-time-consuming way to keep up with all my newly cleared spaces!

Here’s my 1980s-style kitchen, all cleaned up tonight. {Washing the days’ dishes took me about 35 minutes, which admittedly is a while. But, A – we hadn’t done dishes all day, so there were a lot, and B – we don’t have a dishwasher. Woe unto me!}

But enough about me…. tell us: How is your home office (or desk or paperwork pile) coming along? UPDATE US!

And if you haven’t signed up for  my free 5-Day Hotspot Challenge, do that right nxw so I can send you my Daily Maintenance Checklist!