Is your desk tidy at work?

[xsquared]

Or cluttered with paperwork amd stationery?
Does your line manager ever comment on it or leave you be?

It's tidy, with everything put away into drawers or in tray (max a few things that are in flight). I like to start a new day with a clear desk, it helps massively.

My colleagues desks are mostly very messy and the site director has been known to use my desk as the standard when we are due visitors, which is embarrassing, but I used to hot desk in an old role, so I'm used to not keeping hold of random crap

Nope - apart from Friday afternoon when I do tidying and filing……

Some workplaces have policies around clean desks/ paper reduction.

Are you a visual organiser? I find it impossible to keep track if I tidy things away, or God forbid someone moves my piles. You might as well ask me to type with my hands behind my back,

I tend to accumulate a lot of paper in my role so I keep things in folders and in trays. I would describe my style as organised clutter rather than messy.

In all places I have worked, a member of senior management has commented on people's desks needing to be tidied but this is a once a year occurrence in all cased. Guess which profession I'm in.

No it's got bunting and fairy lights on
He told us to make it "less corporate" so..
Now he walks past our desks and goes to say something and sighs and walks off

We have a clear desk policy for confidential reasons.
We're allowed photos etc up but nothing relating to work to be left at the end of the day.

Completely clear every day. If I was taken ill, it would be like a new desk for a new person with nothing to be done. Not one single personal possession left there.

a desk to call your own, and at work?

Hot desking and a clean desk policy (since it’s only yours when you’re using it) is the reality in many workplaces these days.

Or, my desk is in the spare room. it’s up to me to tell myself off when it is out of hand.

Oh, I don't leave confidential information lying about. They get filed and locked away.

My job by nature uses up a lot of paper though.

If you want the office cleaner to clean your desk and keyboard - have a clear desk. If not, it won’t be properly cleaned, if at all.

I once worked for a firm whose offices suffered severe damage from an explosion in the building next door. All the windows were blown out and everything on people's desks ended up in the street. After that they insisted that everything was put away in locked drawers and cabinets overnight, and only the bare minimum was allowed out during the day. So I've never got out of the habit.

That is fair enough.

The only time we've been asked to tidy up our desks is when an inspection is due.

At my first proper job my desk was what I thought was 'organised chaos'...when I got a new job and had to pack it all up I realised that that was a big fat lie. Going through the piles was literally like an archaeological dig, breaking through the strata of all the different eras I'd worked there. The shredding took hours and hours.

Now my desk is tidy. Every scrap of paper is converted to some sort of digital format and shredded at the end of the day as a rule.

Yes. I dislike chaos and clutter. Even my desktop on my screen is tidy. I do all of my work on a computer, and just have a notepad and pen on my desk, plus my tea mug as well as my laptop and extra screen.

Spotless, my desk at home is also tidy but has more technical manuals etc on it

Following lockdown we all now mostly hot desk at work & work hybrid so clear desk policy now. I’ve got into the habit of reading documents etc on screen rather than printing everything out anyway as I can’t be arsed to lug loads of paper about (I do a lot of cross referencing of various technical documents so there’d be a lot!)

My desk at home is titchy so doesn’t have enough room on it for crap to accumulate!

As a teacher, I would leave my desk clear and tidy every evening. Next day, by the end of lesson 1, the undoing would start.

Now WFH, it's almost always clear and tidy because I have a room to myself and the kids I teach are miles away.

It’s an absolute mess, paperwork everywhere. My boss does stare at it when she comes in but doesn’t comment as it doesn’t affect my working ability.

I run my own one person business. My desk occasionally gets untidy if I'm doing a lot of admin but I keep it fairly clear. No photos or knick-knacks.

Empty. We have a 'no camping' rule 🤦🏻‍♀️

I disinfect and clean the desk every single day I can't start work before I've done it!

cluttered yes hahaha
I use scrap paper to write notes, thoughts, not doing without that.
Even in my "paperless" job I still ended up scratching out thoughts on scrap paper.

Teachers (I'm in school a lot) all have messy heaving desks ime.

I don't know who my line manager is. Whoever they might be, they are seldom seen. Candidate #1 lives 200 miles away, has a messier desk than mine. Candidate #2 has only come into his desk 4x in last 2 years. Candidate #3 never enters my office area, has a messy desk in far away building.

Mine is neither completely clear nor overly messy, I have a couple of photos, two pen pots, desk phone, one of those glass galileo thermometers, two piles of paper (a working pile which I use all day and comes home with me and a longer term pile which I dip in and out of less frequently), and usually a few technical bits and bobs (at the moment a digital thermometer, some samples of plasticware, some electronic items). It gets messier during the day but I straighten it up every evening.

Mine is meticulous! I like a tidy desk.

my boss’s desk on the other hand 🤢 if someone tells me some paperwork i need is on his desk, i grimace! I can never find anything. He never washes his cup neither, says the coffee is nicer in a dirty one😂

Mine is tidy. If it's not, it's what I describe as 'organised untidiness' as in I know what every piece of paper is and why it's there. I can't work efficiently in a mess.