take me to the shredder

May-June is always a good time to clean up the home office. (The office office is spare and requires only about an hour's worth of work at the end of the semester to tidy and toss out.)

I think I didn't do a very thorough weeding of files last spring, because I was trying to get ready for my research trip to Europe. This year, the file drawers are bulging and the cleanout must be done.

The old paper-versus-electronic copy rages in full force: e-copy means out of sight, out of mind. But there's soo much more room in the file drawers if you toss everything you have electronically! I am also tossing dated newspaper articles (yep, I'm one of THOSE people!) and background materials I've had for a couple of years but have never used for courses.

And then I'm tossing all the stuff I collected for projects I'll never do in part because the materials are so dated. Example: all the ads for econonomic development in magazines I collected when I was in Poland in 2005. If I am able to get a book contract to write up my work about tourism in Eastern Europe, it will NOT focus very much on economic development. It was a topic I could never make much headway with because it's vast and has always been tangential to my smaller subject.

I'm also rearranging as I go: my concept of how to organize my stuff is always in flux, as new interests surface and old ones die. So some topics need more files; others need to be weeded or tossed altogether.

Also, I don't tend to keep old lecture notes in paper copies anymore, unless I am planning significant course realignment in the upcoming semester. I am doing that for the spring in the global cities course, and a bit in the fall for economic geography. Otherwise, bring on the shredder. I estimate that in less than 24 hours, I'll be able to see the surface of my desk again!