Office and lab purgings

I am a packrat. I try to be frugal with my paper use, but I seem to accumulate it to a far greater degree than my more tidy and organized officemates.I suppose it is an outcome of my rabid literature collecting. The funny thing is I probably have the most well organized and gigantic digital lit library of anyone I know. But still I've had to get through the massive mountain of paper over the past few days as I dung out my office in preparation for our move to the US. The lab is not so bad, since I did a big clean about a year ago when I finished with my lab work, but there is still quite a bit to clean out. I don't want to leave a trail of rubbish behind me, I know how irksome it is for those who inherit the space. So I think it's my last all nighter in this lab, how did it come to this!

It's a good time for resolutions, these times of office, lab and household purging bring a clarity lacking in the packrat times.

In my next job incarnation I will:

-try to avoid any printing of papers, instead I will read them on my computer and make notes in my endnote library for easy reference later
-get rid of out of date reagents/media sooner to break up the lab cleaning
-rethink my lab book approach - bound is definitely better in the long run, and separate lab books for different types of work/projects would be sensible. Some kind of digital book archive would also be useful, perhaps instead of printing and pasting I will try pdf-ing and archiving in date order, for later printing and binding as a companion volume to the lab book (or a digital companion, less printing!)
-No facebook at work, period. No hobby research at work, period.
-have a tidy and more minimalist office space (!!)

Back to lab cleanup, see you on the other side!