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Hello wonderful humans and welcome back to the Bliss Bean. I know it's a bit early for spring
cleaning. Here in Wisconsin at least, I don't think winter will be over until at least April,
but I felt likeI really needed a fresh start. A fresh start for 2021, a fresh start to make
spring arrive faster, and so over the course of the next month, I will be doing a series of four
different decluttering videos. There will be a spring cleaning series. I'm going to share
my process and then also give some tips to help you with yours. At the same time we'll be doing
four weekly challenges on the Vibely app, so if you don't know what that is, it's a place
for "Bliss Beans", or viewers of the Bliss Bean to complete weekly challenges, have group chats
about things that us Bliss Beans are interested in, and just support each other in their personal
development journeys. So this month, all of the challenges will be the same as that week's video.
For example, this week the video is decluttering my desk, so I challenge you to declutter and
organize YOUR workspace, share a before and after photo on the Vibely app, and get inspired
by other people who did the challenge. So without further ado, this is how I decluttered my desk.
First of all, I thought I would show you what my desk looks like right now, a very honest look
at what it looks like during the week, because whenever I film videos or take photos or anything,
I clear it off, I make it look perfect, but that is not a realistic representation of what it
usually looks like. So it's not THAT bad, but here it is... These are the flowers from last week's
video, half of which are dead, I've got a bunch of different candles, I've been burning an unhealthy
amount of candles. All sorts of hard drives and wires and SD cards and stuff. Kind of gross paper
towel. Notebook, blue light glasses, so yeah, this is what my desk looks like on a normal day!
I started by moving everything away from the wall so that I could really get into the corners to
sweep there, and then I took everything that was on or near my desk and I put it on the floor so
that I could see everything all at once. Whenever you're decluttering, take everything out and have
it all visible so that you can get a really clear idea of how much you actually have. It's scary,
but you have to make a mess before you can clean the mess, because it's hard to decide what to
throw out if there's stuff that you can't even see because it's, like, hidden at the bottom of a
drawer or something. If you're overwhelmed by the gigantic pile and you don't know where to start,
just reach for the thing that's closest to you ask yourself "Do I want to keep this or let go of it?"
Rinse and repeat. "'Tis the season". It is actually NOT the season. Discard!
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This is the chair that I used to have in my room because my room used to be very, very pink.
During the stage of my room makeover when I was painting walls and putting in flooring so
my room was filled with paint fumes and sawdust, and I could cannot sleep in here, I slept in my
brother's room, I worked in my brother's room, and at his desk he had this soft, like, fake leather,
I don't know what this is, chair, and I really liked it, so I took it! Don't worry, my brother
barely uses his desk, he does everything on the floor or downstairs, so he did not even notice,
but eventually, I had two problems with this chair. One is that it's pretty old,
so it's like peeling, and then also I think I just work better in a hard chair versus a soft one.
Let me know in the comments whether you prefer soft or hard chairs for focusing and getting
things done, but so yeah, I'm retiring this chair and going back into the arms of my old chair.
Beep beep. So rule number... this finger is low-key broken... rule number three of the Konmari
method is "finish discarding first" so the first thing I wanted to do was look through everything
and see what I wanted to get rid of. I really didn't get rid of that many things, I expected
that because I decluttered my room INTENSELY in 2019, so there just wasn't that much left to get
rid of, but I did have like some old washi tapes and some old stickers that I just know I'm never
gonna use, and I actually also am decluttering a lot of my colored pencils and markers and things,
and I was not expecting to be getting rid of this. But as i was looking through it, I just thought...
I used to use these SO much, but I have NOT used them in a while, and I don't really
WANT to be using them anymore, like you know how she says "does it spark joy?". They are not
sparking joy anymore, so I think I'm gonna try and give them away to some little kids that I know,
or see if there's a place that takes craft supply donations or things like that. By the way, if
you're looking for some decluttering inspiration (aside from my videos) you should check out Marie
Kondo's website. I have read her book, I've seen some of the TV show, but I never really looked at
her website and they have some beautiful videos on there. So there's this one video that's all about
the Konmari fold, and someone commented "Why does it feel like I just meditated for 25 minutes? This
video was only four minutes but felt like a full therapy session." But OI am now going to move on
to organizing all of this stuff, so first I want to figure out a system for putting stuff back in
my drawers, because a whole category, one drawer, was dedicated to pencils and markers and stuff, so
I'll probably have some empty drawers now. But I have to figure out a system that'll make sense.
Organizing the drawers was probably the most fun part of this process, so after I had a
rough idea of what I wanted to go in each drawer, I kind of experimented a little bit, I looked for
boxes that I could use as dividers. So in the top drawers, I wanted to put the stuff that I figured
I would be accessing most often, so the very top one has notebooks, notebooks that I don't use
quite as often as the ones that I put on my desk, and then two pencil cases. The next one is for
all my tech stuff, so I have my graphics tablet, hard drives and their cases, adapters, SD cards,
batteries, chargers. I also had headphones and a bunch of wires that were previously kind of a mess
so I just used rubber bands to bundle them up and keep them nice and tidy. This next one is so empty
it's ridiculous, but I decided to have a drawer for scrap pieces of paper that I could use for
little notes or language practice. The next one is for office supplies, so I really love using
the boxes of lids to keep stuff sectioned off and organized, so I have things like binder clips,
rubber bands, and paper clips in this little box. I had some writing utensils that used to be in
my pencil cup that I don't use quite as often and don't look very good on my desk, so I hid
them away in my drawer, and then there's other miscellaneous stuff, like white out, scissors,
tape just your usual office accoutrements... I don't even know if that's how you use the word.
My craft drawer was severely minimized, so now I just have a roll of twine, some leftover ribbon
from Christmas, a bunch of stickers, embroidery floss, and my bag of BTS photos. This last one, I
don't know what to name it, "miscellaneous stuff". I have earplugs, some letter writing stationery,
Madison, Wisconsin postcards that I would like to send to someone someday, and then this notebook
that I just use for scrap paper. It is day two, I have to finish up organizing some things, figuring
out what to do with the stuff that I want to get rid of, and also, after sleeping on the question,
I have decided I do want to keep that Christmas tree around because the corner of my room now
looks so empty without it. I will take the Christmas ornaments off, so it'll just be a tree,
not affiliated with any holiday... But yeah, I'm excited to be done with this! I'm so ready.
My next project was to wrangle all of these freaking wires and cables, so as
much as I love this standing desk, it is kind of annoying that, especially when you bring it up,
all of these wires from the desk, the lamp, computer, charger - are just hanging down. So
the first thing I did was I screwed in the little controller that makes the desk go up and down,
because when I did my room makeover, I couldn't decide whether I wanted it on the left or the
right side, I COULD NOT commit, so I just left it hanging on a wire, and I can't believe it took me
months to literally get around to doing this, but now it's so much easier. After that, I moved on to
the rest of the wires, so the desk came with these sticky zip tie things that I used to bundle up
all of the wires and try to kind of make them lay flat against the bottom side of the desk.
I think I was pretty successful, I think it looks really good now, if I do say so myself!
Technically, I keep this magazine holder in my closet, but it is a part of my workspace,
so I want to look through this and see what old papers I have that I can throw out.
Basically, it's just a bunch of folders for different categories like personal bank account,
business bank account, other stuff I don't remember... so let's see.
Here's a tip! Storing papers vertically makes it SO much easier to find what you need because
you can just flip through it rather than having to dig through a drawer or something like that.
I have this blackboard on my wall that really wasn't being used to its full potential,
so I took some time to make it more beautiful and I decorated it with just the name of the month,
a little affirmation to focus on, and then the habit that I'm working on tracking.
Real quick about this thing, in case you haven't seen my vision board video yet, I really really
like it because it's so colorful, it serves as a decoration. Especially now that my desk is here,
it looks really good in the background of a Zoom call, but also at the same time,
every image represents the kind of life that I want to manifest! So, get you a wall that can
do BOTH - manifestation AND aesthetics. The most annoying part was finishing up. I figured out what
to donate, what to throw away, and then I also took photos of some documents and letters that
I didn't necessarily need physical copies of, but I wanted to be able to see in the future.
On my desktop, I try to keep very few things, so I have some plants, some real and some fake,
these flowers I bought for myself two weeks ago and I don't even think you're supposed
to keep flowers that long but, I threw out the ones that were definitely on their last leg,
I trimmed the stems again, and I changed the water. Hopefully they'll be fine, because they do
spark joy, so I want to keep them around as long as possible. I usually have a candle on my desk,
because I like the relaxing smells while I'm working. I have just a couple of notebooks.
I used to have a bunch and they would keep sliding off because of all the weight, and
crash very loudly, so now I only have four there, and the ones I use less often I put in the drawer.
I have this pencil cup, which also used to be cluttered with stuff that I didn't use often,
that looked ugly, or that didn't even work anymore. I have this little dish where I usually
keep a lip balm, some ear plugs, right now I have my headphones. I also used to keep my SD cards
here if I wasn't using them, but I want to get out of that habit because it just looked ugly, so I'm
gonna try to just store them in the drawer where I have the rest of my tech stuff. And then finally,
I always have a post-it next to me to write down anything that pops into my head while I'm working.
Oh and then also usually what's cluttering up my desk is hard drives and wires and stuff, so
I got these little adapter things that go straight from USB to USB-C, so hopefully this will keep my
desk looking a little more minimal, and that's it! I think i've organized and shown you every nook
and cranny of my desk. Now that you've watched this video, it's time for you to clean YOUR desk.
You thought you could just watch the video and not do anything and get away with it?
So if you want some inspiration and motivation, as a reminder, this week's challenge on our Vibely
group is to share a before and after of your results of organizing your desk, so you can go
to app.vibely.io/blissbean, or just click the link in the description to sign up for that challenge,
I hope you enjoy the rest of this series, please give this video a like and subscribe
to my channel so that you don't miss the other three decluttering videos,
and I think that's it. I will see you next week, thank you so much for watching, bye!