New Year... tidy desk??
I live in hope...
Every year I think, "This year, my desk will look less like a midden" and every year, it, well... still looks like a midden.
Some of it is because I'm inherently not very tidy. Most of it is because I have too many things vying for space on my desk. Working clockwise around me from my left hand I currently have:
- A pile of Gaelic books (grammar books, dictionaries etc.)
- A box of tissues and some hand exercise balls
- A stack of tiny index cards Stu sent me and which I have yet to send to him or Clare (they're not my thing)
- A mechanical pencil sharpener
- A letter rack with notebooks and other random things in it
- A pile of letters (in front of the letter rack, as the letter rack has no free space)
- Two pencil cases, one containing sketching pencils, the other containing random pens
- A 30 minute sand timer
- A document stand with my daily diary propped on it and some random papers behind
- More random papers, post-it notes, slips of paper with stuff on, a filled notebook I need to process
- A couple of notebooks - one a daily driver, one an ideas book for writing
- A second monitor, attached to my laptop
- 3 dishes of paperclips
- 5 assorted jars being used as pen pots
- Another notebook with scrappy notes in (because I couldn't find the usual one in the midden)
- Two more notebooks (one a morning pages one; the other... who knows? I think it started life as a covid-diary but has been unopened for months)
- A pencil tin with fountain pens in (some filled, most empty), with a Nock pen case on top, with filled fountain pens in it
- Some hand cream
- An assortment of pens and pencils (loose, not in any of the 5 pen pots!)
- A mug mat
- My laptop
- A mouse mat and mouse
You may perhaps see the problem! Clearly, I could rationalise the pens a lot. And I could move the notebooks out of the letter rack and then use the letter rack for letters (how bold and original!). I'm also considering using a Comme Glom desk jotter to replace all the random bits of paper and notebooks on my desk. Not only would that tidy the right-hand side of my desk up enormously, it would be bright and cheerful to have on my desk, too.
The desk jotter is 25cm x 18cm (roughly 10 inches x 7) and has 40 pages with decorations, space for to-do, not to-do, actions, reactions, notes, doodles, distractions, and so on. Every page has a different design. The paper is 170 gsm, thick, recycled paper, the glue binding the pad together is vegan-friendly and the jotters are a limited print run. Plenty of space for all those random notes I scribble over a day, and interesting graphics to brighten even a dull day in the middle of a Scottish winter. There's so much to look at in every design. What seems like a simple frame turns out to have a snake hidden in it; a volcano morphs into a fly agaric mushroom...
It's quirky and fun and you never know, 2023 might just be the year that I can see the surface of my desk!
