Clean Off Your Desk Day

Clean Off Your Desk Day heralds the beginning of some serious spring cleaning. Do you really need all that junk, old paperwork and mess on your desk? If the answer’s no, take the opportunity to do a little tidying!

I have taken the following exercise from a site called Breaking News English.


Read the following article and delete the wrong word in each of the pairs of italics.

Are you a messy / messed up or tidy person? Is your desk a mountain of books and paper or is it a dust-free / free dust zone? January 14th, Clean Off Your Desk Day, is for you if your desk looks like a bomb is / has hit it. This is also a day for you to clean your computer desktop too. Most of us have a lot / lots of clutter on our desktops and most of it needs to be filled / filed away somewhere. Clean Off Your Desk Day is a good way of starting the year as you mean to go / goes on. A tidy desk means you are organized. You won’t have to spend hours looking for things under piles of paper. Your stapler and hole punch will be close at palm / hand. You’ll have somewhere safe to put your coffee mug; a place where it isn’t in danger of tipping under / over and making your documents a soggy brown mess.

Why do some people have such / so messy desks? Is it a sign of a creative mind, an overworked person, or simply lazily / laziness? It may be a clue / due to your childhood. If your parents were organized and tidy, you are more likely to be too. If you took proud / pride in tidying your room as a child, you will do the same with your desk as an adult. For many people, a tidy desk makes / make them feel good. They can sit down and get to work straight away / on. A well-organized computer desktop is the same. The person can navigate his or her way very quickly to any document they want. It only takes two minutes at the end of the day / daily to tidy up and put things in the right place. Make use of your wastepaper basket (that’s trash can for Americans). Do that, and life will be more simpler / simple.

If you'd like, there is also a listening component to this exercise. The MP3 can be used as both a listening activity or dictation, according to the class's needs.

 

I also distributed the following article and then created a discussion in class about various tips of cleaning your office space and also keeping it organized.

 

It’s 4 p.m., you’re feeling wiped out and famished, and you know your only hope for making it through is getting your claws on a caffeine-infused substance (another skim cappuccino, perhaps?).

You’re pondering this when a scent hits you like a humid summer day: the kind of buttery, slightly nauseating smell you usually associate with an overcrowded multiplex. Your co-worker has made popcorn, and gosh darn it, they want the world to know it!

Annoying as random food smells in the office may be (gotta love that guy who eats beef curry on Thursdays!), there may be a more sinister plot at work here. Turns out, all that eating at our desks is wreaking havoc in our cubicles and turning our work zones into bacteria-laden hot messes.

According to a new American Dietetic Association and ConAgra Foods Home Food Safety program survey, 27 percent of us eat breakfast at our desks, most of us chow down lunch there and 50 percent of us spend the rest of the day stuffing our faces with snacks in our cubes or offices. Not surprisingly, the ladies -- known for their multitasking prowess -- are the major culprits.

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Now comes the despicable truth: Your desk may harbor 400 times more bacteria than -- wait for it -- the average toilet seat. See, 64 percent of us clean these desktops once a month, or less. And before you get all judgey, think about it: How often do you really clean your desk, especially compared to say, your kitchen counters and dining room tables? Chances are, not so much. Do you bring your lunch to work and stock it in the fridge? About one in five people admit they don’t even know if the office refrigerator is ever cleaned or not. Yikes!

But avoiding skanky fridges may not be the answer. Nearly half of those surveyed admitted to leaving their lunches that require refrigeration out of the fridge for three hours or more. But to reduce the risk of food-borne illness, "Perishable foods should not be kept out for more than two hours and need to be kept at the correct temperature of below 40 degrees," explains Toby Smithson, R.D., National Spokesperson for the American Dietetic Association. "Food-borne illnesses like salmonella and E.coli are potential desktop demons."

So what’s a (dirty) girl to do? Obviously and contrary to all assumptions made until now, your desk is not some magical, germ-free land filled with unicorns and rainbows. “Clean from start to finish: hands, desktop and even your lunch bag after use,” says Smithson.

It may seem fastidious, but taking out a few minutes once or twice a week to wipe down surfaces with an antibacterial agent (most household cleaners will do) should do the trick, and don’t forget areas where germs convene like your phone and computer keyboard. And hey, you might even try placing a napkin on your desk before you park your sushi there, just sayin’.

By Violet Owens for YouBeauty.com