Decluttering, or ‘Finding What Was Lost’

I decided to tackle my office yesterday.

My office is a combo of writing, bill paying, filing, ebaying business, storage, and did I mention “Chaos”?

I’ve been researching ad nauseum on how to declutter, organize, or make sense of the growing paperwork that has grown so high that I cannot see the glass top of my desk, or make my way through the limited floor space, but yesterday morning I had an epiphany.

You see, I was going to hire someone to just walk into my office, pick up a (small) stack of papers, hand them to me, and say, “Just deal with this tiny stack today.”

And then I was going to put a bunch of ‘today’s’ together until viola, there would be my desk, clean and ready for a new day.

The problem is, nobody was up for the challenge.

So yesterday morning, over a steaming cup of coffee, I thought, “What if that somebody was me?”

So I took my coffee cup and a 12″ x 9″ x 4″ container into my office, scooped a section of paper off my desk into it, set an hour timer and started in. It went so fast that I did that three times before the timer went off and this morning after my appointment, I’ll tackle the data entry that yesterday’s purging generated. I’ll be that much closer to a semblance of organization and might even tackle a few of the items of my ebay death pile.

One of the most notable items I found in all that paper was a story I had started writing in a notebook, oh, 30+ years ago? I remember at the time that the person I was with told me nobody would ever want to read anything I wrote, so the spiral bound story got stashed away, along with my aspirations back then. The guy is long gone now, and this story might be revived in the future, but the funny thing is, where has this particular notebook been all this time? It certainly has not been on my desk!

But back to the desk and organization. No before or after photos will be posted; I seriously do not want such a reminder of how bad I let it get.

Out to get to an appointment that is a vital part of who I am…might post results here today or in the morning.