Average Jane Packs Up

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My company is moving to a new office the week after next, so every employee is packing box after box of stuff to go to the new place. Some people seem to have jammed more books, games, toys, posters, action figures, shipping tubes, files, papers and small appliances into their cubicles than I have in any given room of my house.

I am not one of those people. So far I have loosely filled one box with personal items, including my stress ball collection (two of them), framed photos of my husband and cats, my desk lamp (with a burned out bulb), a potted philodendron, and miscellaneous books. When I leave the office next Wednesday, all I’ll have left to take is my laptop, a large teacup, a coaster, the contents of one drawer, and any uneaten Luna Bars that may lurk in my file cabinet.

My officemate and I have been given eight or ten huge plastic tubs for packing the things that we want the company to move for us, and so far we haven’t even filled one. You can tell that neither one of us has worked for the company for a particularly long time.

The most important thing I have learned in this process so far is that there is absolutely no point in my ever filing anything. I went through every file folder in my drawer and ended up keeping exactly three sheets of paper. Everything else went in the recycle bin.

I used to be more of a nester at work, but I got out of the habit after repeated moves from one desk to another and one office building to another. I used to be that way about the stuff in my home for the same reason, but now that we’ve lived here for twelve years, the goods have started to collect.

So what’s your desk style? Are you a "big cube o’ fun" type or is your cubicle as Spartan as mine?

Comments

4 responses to “Average Jane Packs Up”

November 1, 2006

Blondie

My desk is pretty full, but I’ve been working at my company for 5 years. We are going to be moving soon, too, and I dread it! It’s time to get out the recycling bin… the really sad part is that I keep my dayplanners. I have every single one from the last five years in a stack on my desk. WHY?!

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November 1, 2006

The Misanthrope

I very much agree with you about files, actually there is a statistic somewhere that points out once an item is filed it’s rarely used again. However, my own statistics state that once it’s thrown out, you’ll need it.

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November 1, 2006

Joy

When I was working..I was a “big cube ‘o fun” person. All kinds of things everywhere. I was the one everyone came to visit for goodies to eat and to see what new stuff I had to look at and chat about. I dreaded whenever we moved desks around in the office. Packing all that up took several sessions…but, it was almost 11 years of accumulation. Good luck with the move Jane.

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November 3, 2006

Jeremy Fuksa: Creative Generalist

I, like you, haven’t been there long enough to have a huge action figure collection either. In fact, I don’t even plan on using any of those plastic crates. I think all my IT stuff, files, etc. should just fit into my personal box (or two).
I have stuff in my garage from my past “big office o’ fun” but there’s no way I’d fit even half of it into our new destination. But, I think there’s lots of books in there that would go nicely into the new library.

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