You know last year I started really de-cluttering our house.  With 3 boys we have tons of boy toys and it seems like we buy more and don’t get rid of any.  My biggest challenge was Thing 3’s room.

You can see my pictures and read of my step by step actions here:  Too Many Toys, What is a Mom to do! That was a project that took a few days and many hours.  I did similar things in Thing 1 and Thing 2’s room.   Then before the holidays I did our Library.

Those were all big projects and I don’t have time every week to do things like that.  However I did set a goal to Simplify our Belongings in 2011.  This will involve getting rid of things and organizing what we keep.  I was so excited to see that Organizing Junkie is having a 52 Week of Organizing Challenge. I am going to do it!  🙂

Here was my week 1 project.

Clean MY Desk.

Here is the before picture.

I got the desk to put my laptop on to be able to work in the dining area, but not overtake the table.  Well what happened is that my chiropractor said my laptop needed to be higher, so that involved putting it on books to make the screen higher and getting a keyboard and it didn’t fit well on my desk, so now I took over the table and my desk became this dumping ground.

It wasn’t pretty!

You can see my laptop on the far side of the table.  It has an orange, white and red striped sticker on it.  For Christmas Rob got me a cool stand for it and a wireless keyboard and mouse, so I thought I could get it to work on my desk again.

Sadly, this is usually what our table looks like.  It is the dumping ground of our house.  I hate it.  Every year our goal seems to be – keep the table clean.  It never happens.

I started by cleaning the table and then took EVERYTHING off and out of the desk.  I got rid of what I didn’t need and organized what I had left.  Leaving a clear spot for my computer.  Which works great there with my new set up.

I love that I can finally sit and work at my desk again and I am ergonomically correct!  🙂

Here is the final product with a clean table and a closed desk!

I love it!  The first challenge was great,, it took me about an hour.  I have made my list of 52 organizing things I want to do this year.  Most will probably take less than an hour.  But this was a good one to start on, because it made such a big difference and is a space I use daily.