Is your desk covered in random sticky notes that are both important and in the way?

Do you have pens, pencils, and notebooks strewn about? Not even necessarily because you’re messy, but because you use them frequently enough that they’ve made a home on your desk?

If you’re doing any spring-cleaning, and now you have to tackle the travesty that is your workspace, stick around to find out 3 MUST-HAVE items to organize your desk and writing space!

I’ll present a variety of items to tidy your desk with easy access, a place to organize your notes, and how you can store notes for safe-keeping until you need them.

Note that you don’t need to buy fancy organizers, you can use items around your house as well.

The items I link in this post are there to give you an idea of what you could use, and I’ll give a homemade suggestion with each item.

(Note: I am not affiliated with Amazon at the time of this post. So I get nothing from any of these links, I just wanted to share products I like or think would work. Also, the prices and availability of these items pictured below are only accurate as of 2/25/22, and are subject to change as time goes on.)

Desk Organizer

A desk organizer is just that: an item to bring organization to your desk.

As I’ve said before, you don’t need to buy a fancy desk organizer.

They’re nice and come in a variety of designs, styles, and shapes; but if you don’t have a lot to spend, you can always use items around your house.

If you’re a big mug, cup, or jar collector; you can use those to tidy up your desk and give a home to all those paper clips, staplers, scissors, sticky notes, pens, etc.

If you’re more into crafts and DIY, you can make desk organizers yourself!

I’ve found that if you search “cereal box diy desk organizer” on YouTube, you can find a lot of crafty DIY videos on how to make your own desk organizers with cereal boxes. Plus, you can customize them however you want to fit your needs or style.

Below is a desk organizer that I have, and I like it well enough. They do have bigger versions with space for notebooks and such.

PAG Mesh Desk Organizer

SITHON Mesh Desk Organizer

ThreeH Mesh Desk Organizer

HAPPYLIVE SHOPPING Mesh Desk Organizer

VANRA Mesh Desk Organizer

JINGXU Mesh Desk Organizer

I use this organizer along with a variety of mugs, tins, baskets, and tiny buckets myself. It works great and has 9 small compartments if you’re looking for something to fit on a smaller desk.

But again, you can use items around your house to reach the same goal.

So now that you’ve got your smaller bits and bobs put away on your desk, where do you put all your loose papers and notes?

Save Jar/Shred Jar

Okay, they don’t actually need to be jars, but I liked the way jar sounded.

But moving on:

I have this system to help me be simultaneously messy and neat with loose notes. I’ve found that if I’m organized in a way where I don’t have to put too much thought into it, and can essentially toss things into tidy piles, I’m much neater with my space.

The system is very basic: have one container for papers you keep, and one container for papers you shred.

Honestly, it feels like a bit much to call it a system, but not sure what else to call it.

But I digress.

This has helped me keep my desk (mostly) free of all the extra clutter created by small notes that I either do or do not need lying around.

The loose notes I save are ones that I don’t need to address immediately, but are important enough that I want to save them for later.

It just makes everything a bit neater.

I used this system by putting loose notes I want to save in a large jar I had lying around, and an old Easter basket for papers that can be shredded.

This keeps my desk paper-free, and allows me to not think too hard about tidying up.

You want something large enough to hold a variety of paper sizes, but small enough to fit on (or near) a desk.

Old Easter baskets, shoe boxes, old jars, or small trash bins can work for this.

If you’re crafty, you can make the plain boxes look nicer with some construction paper or paint.

Zcaukya Easter Buckets

Greenbrier Easter Baskets

Kitchentoolz 1 Gallon Mason Jar

mDesign Small Plastic Trash Can

But now you may be wondering, what do you do with all the papers you decided to save?

Storage Container

So now you have a large jar, basket, or plastic container of papers you want to keep, where the frick-a-frack do you put them all?

Well, that depends on what kind of notes they are, what you need the notes for, and how you wanna go about saving them.

I use it for things like:

• Story ideas
• Random thoughts
• Self-analysis
• Random project ideas
• Companies with blogs

And occasionally important letters that need to go in my important documents box.

My end goal with all my loose notes is to have them written down in a notebook, and maybe written on some kind of word doc on my computer.

It depends on what needs to go where.

But until then, I wanna store them somewhere out of the way. As of now, some are in my save jar, and some are in an unused laptop case hanging out in my closet: waiting to be transcribed.

If having a second storage space seems pointless to you, go ahead and skip this part.

I do it like this because the save jar/basket/container is helpful as an immediate place to drop off and forget about it to keep my desk tidy.

The second storage is where I plan on ultimately storing the notes until I have time to transcribe everything.

Again, if that all sounds like one too many steps, just use your original save container as the only place you store them until use.

But if you do want the second storage, what kind of container should it be?

Well, you can buy a plain ol’ plastic storage container like I have linked and pictured here.

Sterilite 16 Quart Clear Storage Box

But again, you can use whatever you have lying around your house.

Got some empty shoeboxes? Have extra Amazon boxes waiting to be thrown out? Or maybe you have an unused laptop bag like myself that you could easily tuck away from prying kitty claws.

You can also decorate this container like the others if you so wish.

Whatever you choose, just make sure your papers will stay safe until it’s time to put them in their proper place.

Conclusion

So there are 3 items to help organize your desk.

Hopefully, you’ve found it helpful, and have learned a new way to help keep your space a bit tidier.

I have a ton of trouble keeping my space clean. Because I always have one project or another going on, and I’m always trying to keep track of everything.

So I understand how difficult it can be to keep my workspace tidy. I just wanted to share my methods to help you have a tidier space, and make your writing goals a bit easier.

Thanks for reading, and happy writing!