The one thing you must know to declutter and organize successfully.

Most people undertake the project of organizing an office (or any room or area for that matter) with high hopes. Visions of simple, clean, easy-to-use spaces provide motivation for getting started.

Usually the process begins with decluttering. Often it ends there as well and here's why...

In the decluttering process we begin to sort. In the sorting process we find something that either a) we forgot about and needs to be done quickly due to the fact that we lost that thing for awhile or b) we find something that goes in another room. Acting on either one of those things -- doing the task or taking the item to another room -- spells death for the decluttering effort because we've lost our primary focus. In the latter situation, we've literally taken ourselves out of the environment and likely found another area that could use some organizing/decluttering as well. Sometimes we even start a new project in that new area. Yikes, is that a bad idea.

Once the decluttering process has begun, focus solely on that part of the task until your time is up. (Speaking of which, you should be scheduling your decluttering into do-able time chunks. 10 minutes, 30 minutes, an hour or two -- whatever you can manage. Set a timer and focus like a laser beam.)

As far as how to handle the two distracting scenarios I mentioned, try these. Have a pencil and paper handy so you can write down to dos that occur to you as you work. You can fit those into your schedule as soon as your decluttering time is over for the day. And for things that go somewhere else, put them in containers at the doorway of your space. Part of winding up your task for the day should be taking those things where they belong.