The Before & After & After Again

Remember the time my school workroom was all messy? 

And then, after one very long Saturday before school started, it wasn't?

Yeah, me too. And then this happened the week before school started (and had things added to the pile over the first semester):

My Poor shelf! It's CRAM-packed!

 It has stayed this way for a while because as you know, when life happens, who has time to clean out a random workroom you barely use (or would you if it was clean and organized?)

This past weekend, I went up to the school with the express purpose of making it 'eat-off-the-floor-or-do-a-ballet-recital-in-it' clean. I wasn't sure how long it would take, but after 4 hours and LOTS of heavy lifting, it now looks like this:

My trick with any de-cluttering {because, let's be honest, it is loathsome} is to start on one side and work left to right around the room. So basically, control my ADD urge to bounce all over the place. If I go from one side to the other, moving items to their rightful place or getting rid of things, I have a starting/stopping point where I pick back up each time. For some reason, this works for me psychologically. Oh, and a Venti Starbucks no-water chai helps with the motivation. 

Let's hope it stays this way for a while. Which, in teacher land, means for the next week or so.

I liked the cleanliness so much I decided to set up a (rough) Keurig station:

I wasn't kidding when I said I want to be able to relax in there. Maybe I should add a yoga mat or a napping couch?

Got any genius de-cluttering tricks that you use?