Get Organized: Shaping up my Desk and my Work Ethic

For what seemed to be millennia and millennia, my desk was a complete mess. Piled high with papers and games and scraps, I thought that it would take an eternity to clean. Luckily, with the help of my mother, I was able to straighten up my desk and my work ethic this weekend.

Before I dove into this cleaning project, I was horrified at the sight of my desk. Work buildup from what must have been three years was sprawled across it, and I never even imagined cleaning it. While it may seem minor, this disorganized lump of junk took a toll on my work habits.

Without a clean, defined place to work in my house, I have always found myself moving off-task and constantly getting distracted while doing work. I definitely recognized this problem, yet I was too lazy to change my attitude and clean my desk.  I am the type of person who needs to have a rigid work structure. I do very well with organization and habit, because I enjoy being in my comfort zone while doing work. For this reason, I was unsuccessful in a lot of my work before I cleaned my desk.

This weekend, with my mom’s help, I finally decided to shape up and start cleaning. I was surprised and disgusted at all of the garbage that I found. Most shocking to me was the sheer number of empty soda cans; there was close to fifteen piled in my garbage can by the time I had finished cleaning. I felt as if I was staring into the stresses of my past when I threw away those cans. They reminded me of all of the sleep that I had lost freshman year, mainly over trivial matters. Nonetheless, I was beginning to feel cleansed.

In finishing the cleaning process, I remembered how in eighth grade I would do all of my work in this desk, with the bright lamp shining directly in the middle of the stained wood workspace. I felt somewhat nostalgic of my old work habits; I was once the master of organization. After I threw away the last of the random papers, I knew that my habits needed to change if I was going to be successful in high school.

I am now so relieved that I have a specific place where I can focus on nothing except what I need to do. My brain has missed a place of solitude like my desk, and now it is so much easier to think. Without pointless distractions, I am now able to finish my homework in much less time. More importantly, I feel so much better now that I have a small intellectual haven in my room.

If I continued my cycle of laziness and never cleaned my desk, I would have never known how wonderful it is to have a little corner to myself. This project has taught me to be more open-minded about change, because my switch from the living room couch to my stained wood sanctuary is helping me in ways that I am only beginning to realize.