Melida

Whenever someone brings up the idea of "Spring Cleaning" it conjures up an image of people stuck in cabins during the winter and need to clean out their shack after hibernating inside for several months. But basically, Spring Cleaning is used to force us to get organized. There are a lot of us who are just plain slobs who tend to act like pack-rats and collect a lot of debris, be it at home or in the office. Spring Cleaning, therefore, is intended to clean up the flotsam and jetsam around us. And I think this is important, particularly in offices.

There are those who believe a sloppy desk is indicative of a brilliant mind. Baloney. A sloppy desk is indicative of a pigpen and the person is disorganized and undisciplined. Too often people use a cluttered desk to give the illusion they are being overworked and use it as an excuse for being late on a project. For managers who have been around the block a couple of times, a cluttered desk doesn't fool anybody anymore. In our office, we would tell our programmers to subscribe to the military concept whereby you either work on something, file it, or throw it away. If we need more file cabinets, we'll get them, but let's not let our desks become pigpens. To enforce this rule, we would periodically go through the office at night and throw all of the debris on the desks into the garbage. You do this a couple of times and people finally take you seriously. Keeping a clean and orderly workplace can have a dramatic and positive effect on the demeanor of your office workers and they will start to behave more professionally.

People still practice Spring Cleaning at home as well. You see signs of it by the many garage sales in the Spring where people circulate their junk to other people who recycle it around the neighborhood. I tend to believe there is a certain amount of junk we simply rotate from one household to another, so why bother with the garage sales? Let's just play musical chairs with it. Better yet, why don't we just dispose of it once and for all?

I remember my Scottish grandmother in Buffalo, New York was a big believer in Spring Cleaning. Every year she would lead the family in cleaning the house like Atilla the Hun. Beds would be turned, rugs taken out and beaten, windows washed inside and out, silverware polished, kitchen and bathroom floors and fixtures scrubbed, etc. You get the picture; she was very thorough. But she wouldn't stop with inanimate objects, to her way of thinking "Spring Cleaning" also meant cleaning up the family. To this end, once a year she would brew a pot of tea made from Senna Leaves, a very powerful herbal stimulant laxative. I guess she figured it was needed to clean out the toxins in our system, and as anyone in our family can testify, it works, perhaps too well. Not long after drinking a cup of this tea, your system would be flushed of impurities right down the toilet, perhaps hours at a time. It was rather brutal. This stuff was so strong, it would even clean the dirt from behind your fingernails and the wax from your ears. Small wonder Spring Cleaning conjures us a bad image in my mind.

As a result, I tend to keep things orderly and tidy all the time as opposed to waiting for a Spring Cleaning. Maybe that is what my grandmother was trying to teach us all along. Nonetheless, I haven't had a cup of tea in years.

Tim Bryce is a writer and management consultant located in Palm Harbor, Florida (Tampa Bay). Mr. Bryce has over 30 years of experience in the field. His corporate web page is at: http://www.phmainstreet.com/mba/

He can be contacted at: timb001@phmainstreet.com

Copyright 2007 Tim Bryce. All rights reserved.