Clean Desk Mission: Day 7

As promised, an update.  One week in, and the formerly wrecked desk is still clean.  (Yes, this is what I consider clean.   I never said "clear," just clean.)

Admittedly, I had a close-call on Day 5, when I was busy printing and editing and reprinting various items for our 2nd annual school supply giveaway (tomorrow at 10 - woohoo!)

Very late Wednesday night, I was ready to call it a day, but my desk still had notebooks and papers strewn everywhere. (It  looked like the "good old messy desk days.")  And I was tired and drained and tempted to leave it that way, but I knew I didn't want to start out the next morning with it in shambles.  So I took a few minutes to shred the discarded paper and tucked the remaining papers into their proper places. 

Transforming the desk also transformed my mood:  I caught my second wind and felt relaxed and calm, instead of stressed and exhausted.  So I pulled out a daily devotional book to catch up on some overdue reading.  I first had to figure out which day of the year I was on.  Since my calendar blotter was visible, I determined it was day 209 with just a quick glance.  That's a first.  Usually it requires moving a stack of something out of the way to find the calendar.

Then I pulled out my new prayer journal and updated it with a prayer request, and then I spent some time pouring out my heart to God...also a little overdue.

In case you're worrying, no, I'm not setting the stage for some variation of the "Cleanliness is next to Godliness" mantra.  But having a clean desk did let me spend some quiet time in prayer and meditation.  Just saying.

In other related news, I cleaned out the pond pump filters a few nights ago.  My efforts were rewarded with crystal-clear water and an opportunity to meet our newest resident, Mr. Froggy.

Alas, this picture isn't of him.  It's his stunt double or stand-in, or whatever they call them.  Seriously, I didn't have my camera handy when Froggy was doing his underwater acrobatics routine at feeding time.  (I have had the camera "at the ready" since I first saw our new amphibian friend, but no frog spottings since.  I don't know if he's camera-shy or what; time will tell.)  I snapped this picture a few years ago to prove that indeed frogs do hang out on lily pads just like in the storybook illustrations.  We almost always have some frogs around the house and pond - here's hoping they catch their weight in flies and mosquitoes each day!

My wrecked desk - time to say goodbye

Sigh.  I have whimpered and whined about my desk before.  If you have read my blog this year, you've probably seen it.  You're probably tired of it. Even I am tired of listening to my own whining and whimpering.  And yet I would rather blog about it than organize it.  (An organized desk is NOT the sign of an empty mind or a wasted life, despite what the cutesy co-dependent sayings reassuringly tell me.)  There's very little danger of me becoming OCD about this.

A messed up desk just means I waste a lot of time looking for stuff that is literally right under my nose. 

In my defense, I wear a lot of hats, juggle a lot of plates, choose your metaphor.  I work from home, so there's all the professional stuff that comes with the job.  I volunteer in many areas of our children's education and youth ministry, and there's a lot of paperwork that comes with that territory.  And I run a household, so there are bills to pay, statements to file, stuff to mail, etc. 

If that's not enough, our school supply giveaway is in just over a week and that means all the last minute finishing details will need to be hammered out ASAP.  I have envelopes with donations tucked in here and there.  Eeek!  The Secret Sisters cookbook is coming up (it will be our 4th annual) - it's time to get the form ready and create a file for the returned recipes so I don't lose any of them.  I bought a new prayer journal yesterday and started on it...it needs to stay front and center or it will go by the wayside.  Out of sight is out of mind. And then there are recipes...oh, so many recipes I want to try.  Having a printer makes it easy to print them out...and there they lay until I can get them to the kitchen for a test drive.

   

The fact is, I can rationalize and justify this all I want but I need to get a better system and process for dealing with the paperwork that swamps the desk, spills over onto the credenza, the chair behind me, the floor...basically any flat surface within arm's reach. My life is stuffed full of really good stuff. It's time to make a place for everything, and return everything to its place when I'm changing gears.

So today I am literally taking everything off and out of the desk and everywhere else it's stacked, and I'm shredding and filing and organizing.  Just as soon as I post this. 

After I am done sorting wheat from chaff (assuming I don't bleed to death from papercuts or suffocate unnoticed under the deluge that is making its way into the middle of the room), I am going to figure out a way to keep it tidy on a daily basis.  (Flylady got me to shine my sink every night - surely this can't be any harder.)

And you, dear reader, are being drafted as my accountability partner.  Each week, I will post an update on my progress, and maybe even offer helpful tips that I've gleaned from this experiment in self-control.  Please share yours, too - it's obvious I could use some constructive suggestions here.  Maybe I'll even post some pictures, since it should be photo-worthy every week, right?  (I'm not posting "before" pictures - it's just too scary.) 

Okay enough blogging, time to start.  If you don't hear from me by Monday, somebody call a family member to check on me, please?