The following examples have been culled from the big stack of entries we've received to highlight some of the great ways Lifehacker readers managed to tame clutter and get their workspaces back under control. All of the photographs are arranged with the before picture on the left and the after on the right.
Pieter, an Industrial Design student living in Belgium, decided to go not just for a spring clean but an office make over. In his words:
My previous workspace desk didn't really fit at this place. There was some space between the wall and desk where papers and pencils could fall through. I bought an IKEA Galant table top and cut of a corner in the right degrees I needed to fit between the two walls. The table top rests on some wood attached to the walls with 3 inch screws. Now I have a floating desk where all the cable clutter is gone in a gutter just beneath the tabletop.
In a move dear to my own heart, he not only banished the cords from the floor, but he also added some hidden LED ambient lighting to decrease eyestrain.
Megan clarified right off the bat in her letter that she didn't have the typical office setup. She works in a lab and has not only the regular clutter of office paper work and Post-Its, but bottles of solution, beakers, and more scattered across her lab bench.
I put everything in its right place, organized my solutions based on usage, cleaned down the benchtop, and finally changed out the trash. At my desk, I turned the bottom drawer into a filing cabinet and sorted all the papers and notebooks into folders with labels, something I had been meaning to do for a long time. I organized the top drawer to be notepads, pens/highlighters and extra harddrives/usb sticks. I also threw away stuff I had been accumulating for no reason (such as many of the post-its on the bulletin board), and tied up the cables from my mouse and power cord to stop taking over my desk.
The "accumulating for no reason" category is the bane of many a worker. How many times have you cleaned out your desk only to wonder just how many Post-It pads and high lighters one person could possibly need to horde?
We here at Lifehacker give extra credit to Max for jumping into spring cleaning feet first. A senior in high school with a penchant for spreading his work every which way, he decided it was time to radically trim back and consolidate his clutter:
I spread all my school work across two big tables with a laptop and a desktop computer. However, after this spring cleaning, I have managed to fit it all on one neat desk. I hope I can keep it like this! I basically went through both rooms by section and eliminated everything that was no longer essential (which happened to include my desktop computer!) while listening to some fun music.
Max cleaned up not one, but two rooms, jettisoning a ton of clutter in the process. For more pictures of his massive clean sweep you can check out his Flickr gallery.
Although some of the entries we received involved brand new furniture, huge layout changes, and even a dash of paint here and there, Deen's entry is a great example of how just beating back the clutter in your office and give it a new lease on life.
My home office workspace has been a mess for a long time, making it impossible to find anything and also causing a lot of unnecessary stress. I do consulting work and programming and I knew a clean, tidy workspace would make my day so much better. The ultimate motivator came in the form of my decision to put my house on the market. The results don't only make the house look so much presentable but also makes my work day so much more tolerable and the stress has been reduced to a minimum.
Wanting to keep your office spic and span for potential buyers is a great motivation, but Deen found the bigger reward was a less stressful work day.
Chris wasn't content to just clean up his cubicle, he went Extreme Makeover on it and completely gutted it. Blessed with a flexible workplace and understanding management, he raided his local Jo Ann Fabrics craft store and Ikea for his makeover. He upholstered the walls with cool fabric, threw down some new flooring, and in the process transformed his distinctly-cube-farmy cubicle into an awesome open office. For a peek at another remodeled cube, check out the Noir Cubicle.
While we didn't have space to feature all the great entries we received, we are extremely impressed with everyone who took the initiative to declutter and clean their workspace. Great work everyone! There will be a certain editor or four around the Lifehacker offices doing their own spring cleaning after seeing what a great job you've done.