My husband’s moving out. Me? I’m helping him pack and taking back the bonus room.
Two years ago, Dan promised that when we finished building out our basement, he would move his office out of the bonus room and into the new quarters. Some days that vision and a primal scream were all that got me through. I see his moving out as a second chance for both of us. He gets a fresh crack at setting up his home office, and I can reclaim the bonus room, which I’m renaming the game room, the salon, the study, anything but bonus room.
It’s my fault. I never should have called the 16-by-16 room at the top of the stairs a “bonus room.” The term implies a room where everyone can have his way. Dan declared the space his office and parked his desk, phone and computer there, along with a few boxes that multiplied like rabbits on Viagra. The boxes claimed an entire wall, and threatened available floor space. This is the male version of middle-aged spread.
However, it did not deter my children from claiming the room as their upstairs TV lounge, homework station, caterpillar farm, boxing ring and cheese puff arsenal. For them, Dan’s stacked boxes doubled as a climbing wall.
I deemed the room a default guest and game room. Along the way, someone figured the treadmill belonged here and stuffed that in, too. Even the Clean Sweep crew would have walked off this job after being felled by an 8-foot stack of unread Business Weeks.
Because this room-slash-eyesore has no door, just an arch, there’s no hiding it.
“Will you move this downstairs for me?” Dan asks. He keeps handing me boxes he has supposedly gone through for me to take to the basement. But I know him. This is a man who hoards gas station receipts and stubs from his airplane boarding passes.
“Sure thing.” I trot straight out the front door and toss it in a Dumpster across the street.
We continue like this – assembly-line fashion. Every so often I take a box to his new digs, because deep down I do have a shred of conscience.
Once we’d moved the last box out, Dan looked longingly back at the upended bonus room. “What are we going to use this room for now?” he wondered.
“Don’t worry,” I said, pushing him out the door. “I’ve got plans.”
Marni Jameson is a nationally syndicated columnist who lives in the Denver area. You may contact her through marnijameson.com.
How to organize your home office
Barry Izsak, president of the National Association of Professional Organizers, and owner of Arranging It All, in Austin, Texas, offers office organizing rules:
Choose a layout that suits your work style. The parallel workstation has a desk with a credenza behind it. The L-shaped layout has a desk with a return for a computer. And the U-shaped workstation has a desk in the center and two returns, one for the computer and a second work surface. Don’t place your computer on top of your main desk.
Keep office supplies in your desk to a minimum. Don’t store all 24 pads of sticky notes in your desk. Have one or two there and the rest in auxiliary storage.
Create a two-part filing system. One for active files, such as bills to pay and new business; and one for reference, or any information you may need later. Keep active files close by, either in a desk drawer, or in a vertical, stair-step file on your desk. Archive reference files elsewhere.
Get machines off the desk. Move them to non-work surfaces, like the top of a file cabinet.
Go paperless. As much as possible, store information on your computer.
Exercise cord control. Have holes cut into your desktops and shelves to run cords through. Put cord wraps on visible cords so the back of your desk doesn’t look like a scene from “Snakes on a Plane.”
Practice magazine management. If you want to save magazines, get decorative magazine holders. When the holder gets full, say after you accumulate a year of issues, toss the oldest issues.
Start clean habits. Clear your desk after each workday. Sort and toss unnecessary papers at the end of each week. Pretty soon, you’ll feel like Izsak, who says, “Being organized isn’t an option; it’s a necessity.”
