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Moving Time? Good Time to Clear Clutter

(Photo - moving boxes)
With a little advanced planning, office moves can be made simpler. (Photo by Lauren Rugani.)

With the great SLAC move now underway, it's a good time to pare back the clutter that may have built up in your office over the past months, years and perhaps even decades.

"Housecleaning is a great thing to think about in advance of your office move," said SLAC Space Planner May Pon. "It's much easier to do this now than to wait until you've moved offices and you're unpacking."

Many items can be reused—if not by you, then by others. All equipment and material, excluding hazardous or radioactive material, should be taken to salvage for proper reissue, recycling or disposal. Please contact your IT support administrator to arrange the salvage of computer equipment and memory devices (CDs, software, VHS tapes, flash drives). To salvage other items, including extra office supplies or other office equipment, please first fill out the salvage form. As indicated on the form, any item other than furniture, computer equipment and office products will then need to be surveyed by the Radiation Protection Field Operations group before it is brought to salvage. In addition, if you have an item that you suspect may have originated in the accelerator housing, please call Jim Allan at x4064 for inspection.

Before you move assets with a barcode number to a different location or to a new custodian, be sure to go online and fill out a property transfer form.

SLAC also has recycling programs for many other types of materials, including spent batteries, cardboard, Styrofoam peanuts, used toner cartridges, transparencies and paper. Plastic bags and bubble wrap may also be recycled with paper in the green "mixed paper" carts located throughout SLAC. If you will have a considerable amount of paper to recycle, please coordinate with your building manager to arrange for the Facilities department to deliver extra recycling carts or bins to your area. Questions about recycling at SLAC can be directed to Micki DeCamara at x2348.

As you spring clean, please also keep in mind that hazardous materials and hazardous wastes need to be properly managed. Excess hazardous materials that are no longer needed but are still in usable condition may be usable by others. Please contact Judy Fulton at x4538 for more information on this program; she will make the materials available to other work groups at SLAC. Excess hazardous materials that cannot be reused must be properly disposed by SLAC's Waste Management group. To arrange for pickup of a hazardous waste, please complete a hazardous waste pickup request form. Questions about hazardous waste can be directed to x2399.

As you decide what to bring with you to your next office and what to salvage, recycle or shred, the SLAC Records Management Office and Archives and History Office are here to help. Records Management is responsible for records that are created in the course of our day-to-day operations and must be retained for specified lengths of time for financial, legal, epidemiological or medical reasons. These are primarily non-current business and financial records. The AHO specializes in the collection and preservation of the non-current science, engineering and high-level administrative records of the laboratory that document SLAC's scientific and technical achievements.

Records Management and the AHO have embarked on an initiative to help appropriately assess, preserve and/or dispose of records displaced or "discovered" during the upcoming moves. Jean Deken, archivist and head of the AHO, and Pamela Elliott, SLAC laboratory records manager, would like to assist you with weeding through the chaos. Please contact Elliott at x4342 or pelliott@slac.stanford.edu to arrange for record assessment.

"These moves take quite a bit of time, and we're doing everything we can to make sure they're well organized and orchestrated," Pon said. "Thanks to everyone for doing your part to make sure the moves are efficient and safe."

—Kelen Tuttle
  SLAC Today, July 21, 2010