Zen and the art of office organization

[wshaffer]

The problem with keeping both the keys to your filing cabinet on the same keyring: when you lose the keys, you lose both keys to the filing cabinet.

The advantage to keeping both keys to your filing cabinet on the same keyring: when you find the keys, you find both keys to the filing cabinet.

The thing that really makes me happy: that I remembered where I'd put the keys to the filing cabinet just before I googled, "How to break the lock on a filing cabinet."

The keys to the filing cabinet now reside in two separate places. One of which is the keyring containing my house keys, so if I lose the keys to the filing cabinet, I automatically have worse problems to deal with.

I'm having lots of fun organizing my home office as I unpack. I'm getting to decide where to put things based on where it makes sense for them to go, rather than where they seem to fit at the time, and I have fantasies that this is going to suddenly transform me into a neat and organized person. I expect reality will kick in by the end of February. Still, I'm getting to make some real usability improvements in my home office, and this pleases me.

Comments

[vvvexation.livejournal.com]

You actually have places where it makes sense for things to go? You're ahead of me already. Half my stuff is still packed because I can't figure out where to put it that wouldn't be in the way.

[wshaffer.livejournal.com]

Well, up to a point I have places where it makes sense for things to go. I'm currently stalled on unpacking one box because I don't really know where its contents ought to go - I keep taking items out of it, walking around the house with them, and then putting them back in.

[brooksmoses]

Yeah, I should split the keys to my bike locks, for pretty much the same reason.

That, and I recently happened to be tying up my bike in an underground garage where I usually have a weekly appointment (but had not been at for over a month due to holidays), and noticed some familiar-looking bike-lock keys on the ground ... which happened to match the bike lock at home about which I'd been wondering where it's keys had wandered off to. I had no idea I'd actually lost them. But, given that, it seems plausible that I might lose them again, and might be less lucky with finding them.