Tip:
I always thought I was good at organizing until I started going through my "stuff." Boy, do I have a lot of stuff! If you are a teacher, professional developer, or administrator, you probably have paper, books, articles, software, and lots of other "stuff" that you don’t need anymore.
[drawing from Breathing Space ( http://www.breathing-space.com/)]
I started asking myself some questions that you might want to ask yourself:
- How long do I really need to keep all of these old project files, journals, reference materials?
- What will happen if I let this file go?
- Is it available online?
Keep it Simple
- Clean your desk before you leave the office or classroom.
- Set up bookshelves for essentials just for you.
- Be selective about what you keep on your desk and shelves.
- Use stacking trays for things to read, file, or to give to someone else.
Digitize
- Go through your scrapbooks to find pictures to digitize.
- Take inventory and don’t try to save or scan everything.
- Save pictures on your computer, back up on CDs or upload into online photo albums at sites such as FlickR (www.flickr.com), Shutterfly (www.shutterfly.com), SnapFish (www.snapfish.com) and other photo album sites.
- Store your files in folders. (I’ll probably do a tip on this later)
- Save your favorite Websites in your Locker using the WRL builder in My eCoach (www.my-ecoach.com), bookmarks or favorites, the Firefox extension Scrapbook (http://amb.vis.ne.jp/mozilla/scrapbook/), or check out the tip on del.icio.us (http://del.icio.us/)
Read
- Limit your reading material. You cannot read everything and yet retain all the information you read.
- Throw out the oldest material (read or not) when that space is full. This was really tough for me. I still have journals from the 1990’s. I just know I’ll need them someday!
- Touch it once and then move on. Use the DRAFT technique:
- Delegate
- Read
- Act
- File
- Toss
Stop Buying
- Think before acquiring more. Ask yourself if you really need this new item or where you will store it.
- Purge file folders and storage items before adding more things to your limited space.
Next Tip: Renaming Photos
