It pays to have friends in real estate. Besides the obvious benefit of having someone to go to when you need to sell your home, your real estate friends are full of great advice about staging a home to look its best. Here's "The Breadbox Test" and how it helped us get our office organized for good.
No room in the house is so vulnerable to useless clutter as your home office desk. Ours seems to be a magnet for everything from discarded mail to zillions of empty flash drives.
Luckily, a friend in real estate recently let us in on a trick she uses to stage her clients' messy interiors to look their best. It's called "The Breadbox Test." Sticking carefully to The Breadbox Test, she can transform the most cluttered and uninviting room into a space that potential homeowners are dying to call their own.
So how does it work? Basically, you commit yourself to hiding away everything smaller than the proverbial breadbox. Things like pencils and paper clips get tucked into a drawer, while larger items like your drawing tablet, reference books or a potted plant stay seated comfortably in plain sight on your desk top and shelves.
By running everything in your space through The Breadbox Test, you're effectively removing lots of tiny bits of visual clutter. The result is a workspace that looks organized, thoughtfully decorated and inspiring.
Try it! Run The Breadbox Test on your home office tonight, clearing away every thing in sight that's smaller than a breadbox. Do this every night (or maybe once a week for lesser-used workspaces) to maintain an inviting and clean home office for good.
(Images: Flickr Find: Minimalist Mac Desk, White With Pops Of Color in the Home Office)
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I like this idea, especially for instances (such as mine) where the home office area shares space with a more public room.
I make jewelry and it can take hours to clean my desk/studio of all the loose beads, wires,etc. My desk is in a state of perpetual mess. I admire and respect those who can do it, but I just can't maintain it for more than a few hours! (sigh)But I like this expression "If a cluttered desk is the sign of a cluttered mind, what sign is an empty desk?"
ArtsyGirl, that's a great quote! I prefer an organized over "empty" desk. This is a good idea for keeping things looking tidy. I would only add that nothing keeps an office tidy like only keeping what you use.
I can see how this rule could help, but there are some things -- like pencils and erasers -- that I like to have visible because I use them all the time. Also, I think a big can of pencils (or better yet, colored pencils) makes it look like the office is actually used for something other than sitting around.
@Artsy Girl, my grandmother had a quotation clipped from a newspaper and decoupaged onto a paperweight on her desk that stated, "A neat desk is a sign of a frightened mind." I think of it whenever I'm tidying.
Still, I like this rule and am going to apply it all over the house. My problem, when I corral lots of little things in a hurry, is a plethora of larger containers labeled "desk supplies" or "accessories," or, worst, "miscellaneous."
I like this tip because it doesn't really say, "Get rid of the pencils." It says, "Get rid of the pencil." Your collection of erasers, pencils and what not can be placed inside a pencil box, which will collect the clutter into a more unified (and stylish hopefully) container.
It probably won't work all the time, everywhere for everyone, but I like the new perspective.
I love this suggestion, and can see how it could help me. But I'm also sympathetic with taterspoon (one peek under my bed shows box after box of stashed things after other similar clean ups). I think I need each week to have 6 days of "breadbox rules" and one day of "organze the debris".
I like "rules" like this even if I don't enforce them. They make me re-think how I have been handling things, and help me to see with new eyes. I'm going to have a good look around my house and see if there are any smaller items that can be put away, even if they don't stay there permanently.
Great idea...perfect for staging (i.e. photo shoots). Not so much for real life.
There is a point at which perfectionism becomes an obsession. At that point, creativity ceases to exist.
Life's too short...
I actually use an attractive breadbox on my kitchen desk to hold all small notepads and items. It works!!
@ArtsyGirl I've got that quote on an index card, sitting right in the middle of my cluttered desk. Time to go clean!