One might have thought that a professor of management and marketing would be a master manager of her time and space. However, only in hindsight did she realize that âscheduled maintenanceâ would have saved her time, grief, stress and countless wasted hours.
âThe âpurge and organizeâ mentality morphed into a lifestyle which has spilled over into how I maintain my home, possessions and my personal life,â Gilbert said. âGetting rid of everything unwanted has now become a daily task on my mental to-do list.â
After obtaining the rank of full professor in the summer of 2008 at MTSU, Gilbert felt the need to purge her office of papers, folders, books, computer files and artifacts that she had been collecting since she started working on her doctorate several years ago. It was a liberating experience, she discovered.
âWhen you start as a new faculty on a tenure track, you hit the ground running,â she noted. âAnd you really donât have time to put a system in place. But taking the time to put a system in place would have saved me so much in headaches and stress and lost items. Thatâs what you donât realize.
âIt took me about a month, working a few hours every day. When the job was complete, what struck me was how much more I enjoyed being in my office. I knew instantly where I could locate my belongings because I was no longer bogged down by unnecessary items.â
Her newly cleared-out office motivated her to look for âhidden treasuresâ at home with which to decorate her office in her ânewly simplified space,â as she called it.âI went through everything. I donated items to other people or to colleagues or to the library. I threw away things. After the initial purging, I knew what I had, and I could very easily get my hands on it.â
People should keep only whatâs essential to them, Gilbert said.
âThe problem is that we accumulate so much stuff, we donât even know how to begin the initial sorting and purging process. It can be a painful process.
âI think we hoard because we feel overwhelmed by the process of getting started with the purging,â Gilbert suggested. âI knew I had so much junk tucked in my drawers that it would take me a long time to go through it. But once you do it, thereâs no going back. I canât imagine having that clutter around again.
âWith junk mail, instead of tossing it, I call the vendor and ask that they not send me anything again. I block [unwanted] email. I do this at work and at home. In my office I have places to display my things that were hidden away in boxes in my house. I get all my journals online now. I organize all my course notes into two binders.
Clearing the clutter makes you more efficient,â she said.âHow much time do we waste because we canât find something? How much stress does that cause? Itâs a process of creating mental clarity. You have space to concentrate on whatâs important instead of worrying about where something is. How can you possibly know everything you have in a messy office environment? When you have the bare minimum, you can see it and say, âI donât want it.â
âHaving fewer things and fewer places to look for them speeds âfind timeâ and facilitates the maximum usage of your possessions,â she explained. âIt goes without saying that information is of no value if itâs unreachable. Havoc induces a lackadaisical attitude. Slovenliness on the job can slowly result in missed meetings, late arrivals, projects left unfinished and lost opportunities. The end result can be a tarnished image.
âMy advice is to exercise diligence daily in terms of streamlining your office space and setting aside time for housecleaning chores,â she advised. âThe subsequent clarity of âless is moreâ and âeverything in its placeâ will infiltrate through your very thought process.â
Last year, Gilbert launched a blog titled âOrganized for Efficiency: Finding the Transformative Power of Decorum,â representing two years of research. It can found at .
Gilbert acknowledged that she is a happier person.âI love being in my space here,â she noted as she looked around her sparsely furnished office.
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