My good friend over at the Aedificium has a great post on storage, and more generally speaking, the benefits of keeping things simple and organized. We all know the person at work with the incredibly messy desk, or the one with a really neat one (by the way, this is one of the principles in Six Sigma, for those that may have been exposed to this training). Or for those of us in IT, how it makes our job much easier to have a clearly defined and organized fileshare structure, naming conventions for servers & workstations, and data rooms and datacenters with organized wiring and layouts, as well as switchport descriptions in the configs. Or despite the depictions in the “mad scientist” movies, how real world labs are pretty much organized (at least in my experience working onsite at biotech customer sites).
Why not carry these concepts home? Of course, I’m guilty of having a garage that needs neatening up, but the idea is to take small increments at a time. My wife is a fan of the FlyLady website, which deals with exactly these things. In short, pick a room, make it a family fun affair if you have a family, and keep what you need/really want, and donate/get rid of those things you don’t. The idea is to NOT make it overwhelming – one room, or one shelf even, at a time.
And for some inspirational music while you do so…
The Science Attic 