My Desk: The Final Frontier

After all my blogging, errr, bragging, okay bloviating about my clean desk earlier this fall, I confess I let it slowly slide back into a slovenly mess, starting around fall break, when my docking station (and monitor) crashed.  Day by day, the detritus built back up a little at a time (I think the paper critters breed at night when we're asleep.)  You can say it - you knew it all along, didn't you? When I stopped the weekly updates, that was the beginning of the end.  It was indeed.

But the perfect storm brewed today:  a missing bill, the approaching holidays and getting the tree up in the bonus room swirled around me until I finally took time to whip it back into shape.  And now, with heartfelt apologies to Johnny Nash, my clean desk put me in mind of his single, "I Can See Clearly Now"...with a twist.

I can see clearly now, the clutter's gone,
I can see all the projects lined out for me...
Gone is the junk mail that had me blind
It's gonna be a bright (bright), bright (bright)
Sunshine-y day.

I think I can make it now, the catalogs are filed,
All the expired coupons have disappeared
Here is the tidiness I've been prayin' for
It's gonna be a bright (bright), bright (bright)
Sunshine-y day.

Look all around, there's nothin' but clear desk
Look straight ahead, nothin' but clear deskkkkkkkkkk....

I can see clearly now the clutter's gone,
I can see all the dates on my calendar...
Gone is the tower of papers that had me blind
It's gonna be a bright (bright), bright (bright)
Sunshine-y day.

Admit it - you're humming, aren't you?  Not sure it's gonna be a sunshine-y day, but there's a little ray of sunshine beaming down on my clear desk blotter right now.  Because I found the bill.  And I still have a few days to get it paid. Ahhhhhh.


Happy organizing

Clean Desk Mission Week 9: Whaddaya mean, this isn't organized?

So here I was, merrily cruising along, patting myself on the back for maintaining an organized desk (for two months and counting!) Okay, so the last couple of days have been a little less-than-organized, but the chaos was quickly brought back under control before I took this shot today:

And then I read this post from Lifehacker.com and suddenly I'm second-guessing myself.  Is the desk merely "clean" or is it organized?  Talk about bursting my bubble.  But in my defense, I did clear out all the extra pens, post-it-notes and other detritus back when I first got serious about this project back in late July.

Actually, the Lifehacker post on singletasking  (which included the link to REALLY organizing your workspace) was what first hit home with this dyed-in-the-wool adherent to multitasking.  There are some salient points made in the article, and if I'm honest, my own experience bears witness to how much more effective I am when I don't try to check Facebook, my blog, reply to email and work messages while simultaneously uploading pictures and editing or writing - and scarfing down lunch.  It all gets done, but usually with a certain amount of heartburn, both figurative and literal.

Just don't quibble with my ability to make coffee, bake biscuits, feed the dog, unload the dishwasher, and start dinner in the slow cooker all at once.  Fully caffeinated, I am a force to be reckoned with in the mornings, if only for a few spectacular moments.

Happy tasking (in whatever modality you choose)!

Clean Desk Mission: Week 7

Back in the day, photos (and their negatives) were purely physical things.  You had to buy film, use the entire roll, then get the pictures developed, sorted out and stored in albums (keepers) or boxes (rejects and duplicates.)  The ratio of good shots to "meh" shots has always been somewhere around 1:10 (maybe that's just my photography skills) but I have boxes of "also-ran" images to testify as to this phenomenon - I have no idea why we I keep blurry, off-center and just plain bad pictures, but we I did - and do.

In the digital era, the entire photo process is now vastly different.  Bad shots can be instantly retaken, or enhanced, cropped, focused and otherwise electronically corrected.  No more developing an entire roll of film to get a few good pictures - now we cherry pick those that we want or need an actual printed photograph, and print them ourselves or upload them to a photo center for nearly instantaneous printing.

Perhaps because I am a product of the earlier generation, I still have trouble discarding bad or duplicate images, even though I have no monetary or even sentimental investment in them. I'm slowly getting better at culling out the truly bad pictures, just because their sheer volume makes it difficult to sort through my files.  But my computer system is so thoughtful it creates its own filing system (by date) for me.  And so I find myself with a picture file that looks like this:

And as the little "elevator bar" to the right hints, this is just the tip of the ugly photo file iceberg.  Hundreds of folders, some with dozens of photos, some with only one or two, arranged only by date.

Since my desk is still tidy, it seemed like a good time to turn my attention on my electronic filing system and do some major organizing there, too.  A few hours of work, and the files now look like this:

There are two remaining (and important) steps to finish this project. One is to go through the exported file folders and the photos on my flash drive files, and get all the pictures in one central location (and backed up); then go through each folder and cull out the remaining bad shots that I'm never going to need, want, use, or even think about again.

But I'm happy to report I'm at least one step closer to reaching that peak of photo organization nirvana, since I now have a framework of file organization that I can work with.  And I didn't even have to blow the dust off any boxes in the process.  Score one for technology!

Clean Desk Misson: Week 6

So here's my desk, still clean.  I even updated the blotter to September on the last day of August.  My ever-ready sunglasses and coffee mug are always waiting to jet out with me in the mornings.

....and here's what else showed up on my desk this week: 

 Yep, three new pairs of sunglasses.  They are props for our intrepid FBI (Faithful Bible Investigator) agents, so they can take MIB-esque mugshots for their photo ID badges.  (Which turned out GREAT - it's amazing how sophisticated these 3rd, 4th and 5th graders can look when they put on the shades and strike a serious pose.)  The sunglasses will remain on standby for a few weeks while we get any straggler photos taken.  And then I'll have to find a place to store them.

The desk got a heavy workout this past week.  Once my replacement toner arrived, it became a frenzy of printing:  Kindergarten coloring pages, FBI background check sheets and other paperwork to augment the purchased curriculum, and a few new recipes to try.  But so far, the combination of ruthlessly sorting the mail each day and putting everything away at the end of the day have yielded good results.  Time to move on...I think I can now rely on my newly formed habit to keep the desk maintained.

Clean Desk Mission: Week 5

It looks like I have passed the one-month milestone for a clean desk.  How is it looking?  Well, here it is today.

Yes, the inbox is getting a little full.  Thanks for pointing that out.  One of today's missions is to tackle it and get it back under control before it gets any messier, then dust the desk.

And so you know the "rest of the story" (with apologies to the late Paul Harvey), here's the stack of stuff that is currently piled on the floor next to my desk.

I don't count it as part of the desk, because it is not allowed ON the desk.  But it needs to be dealt with ASAP.  What is it?  Well, it's the leftover kindergarten curriculum printouts from a project I'm wrapping up this week; new curriculum for our 3rd-5th graders (classes start next Wednesday - woohoo!); a binder full of youth ministry forms that I need to sort and organize and give to our youth minister next Tuesday; a box of plastic sheet protectors for a recipe project I've got goin' on; and unsorted mail from yesterday.  (Oooh, is that a new Better Homes & Gardens issue peeking out? I guess that will be my reward for culling through the pile today.)

My little green orphan doodad has not been tossed out, as threatened.  It's been joined by a compression fitting.  Like the green thingamajig, I have no clue what it goes to or who put it here, (but at least know what  it is.)  Wonder what cute little offspring these two might morph up?  If I leave them alone overnight, I might find out...

I can't brag about my stupendous photo file organizing efforts; too many other urgent things took priority this week.  But there's always next week, right?

Clean Desk Mission: Day 28

Twenty-eight days.  Four full weeks...almost a full month.   I haven't dusted it in a month, though - ewww.

And in the interest of full disclosure, I did have a slip-up this week.  As I laid my weary head on my pillow Tuesday night, I realized I had left piles o'stuff.  The horror!  My eyes flew open and I very nearly crawled out of bed to go straighten everything up, but it was midnight and I figured it could wait six hours.  To be honest, I was a little pouty when I faced a less-than-crisp and clean surface the next morning; I've grown accustomed to having a clean desk greet me each and every morning.

But my workspace was bound for more messiness anyway, with lots of writing and editing to do this week.  And that means lots of piles of this 'n' that scattered here and there and everywhere, all day long.  However, since the desk is staying relatively clean, it seems rather pointless to continue to dwell on its cleanliness (or even its dustiness) each week.

So let's talk virtual file organization.  How 'bout them computer files?   Okay, let's take baby steps, and start with photo files. I downloaded the new Picasa 3.8 and I'd like to say I'm having fun playing with the new embedded Picnik photo editing, but I haven't gotten it to open yet.  (Something tells me my browser settings are at fault.)

I'm also feeling sucked into the Picasa photo-storage vortex, swirling closer and faster to the drain.  The Luddite in me is leery of online photo storage, even though I've been using WalMart's photo center and even SnapFish for more years than I can count.  Part of me just likes having my photos on my hard drive or flash drive (yeah, where they can get sizzled in the flash of a lightning bolt, or accidentally washed and dried to oblivion.  I know, I know.

But I am working hard to get my photos in some semblance of order.  I keep my text files pretty orderly but PIcasa's folder-naming gizmo does some hinky things now and again, so my photo files are a bit unkempt.  And the bigger they get, the worse they are.  Time to get cracking on them.  Keep your fingers crossed that next Friday's update allows me to brag on some new, impressive photo filing system I've got going on.   Then we can take a road trip to a totally foreign destination:  the land of external hard drive backups.  (Yes, I have one.  And no, I'm not sure exactly how to use it.)

What can I say, except I work without a net.  And sometimes I jump off cliffs. (Don't tell mom and dad.)

Yes, that was actually a leap, not a fall.  No, despite how it looks, I did not do a face plant in the water but went in feet-first, just like the Navy SEALS say you should.  And yes, I know it is foolish and dangerous to jump 20 feet into a gorge on a mountain stream with barely-submerged rocks only a few feet away.

But in my defense, I wasn't as crazy as this guy who climbed about 40 feet up a tree to jump into the same area.

However, I guess I have proven that my answer to the age-old question, "If all the other kids were jumping off a cliff, would you?" is yes.  And with that sanity-defying leap of mine, I have had all the summer fun I can possibly stand.  Bring on fall and football! (15 days and counting....)

Clean Desk Mission: Day 21

I'm probably going to jinx myself here (it is Friday the 13th after all), but the clean desk thing seems to be getting easier over time.  I discovered one of my biggest sources of desk-clogging detritus is the mail.  So if I sort through it immediately and ruthlessly, and deal with the one or two pieces that are keepers, it's pretty easy.  (Yeah, I know, that's no big revelation; organization experts have been saying that for years.  Sometimes you gotta discover things for yourself.)

What else takes over and clogs my desk?

UFOs.

That's right. UFOs.  Unidentified Found Objects.  You know, little bits and pieces of things that no one knows where they came from, where they go, what they belong to, or what to do with them.

What do you do with those things?  Give them to mom.  She'll know.  She knows everything. She knows where the extra jar of mayonnaise is (pantry, third shelf, to the left.)  She knows if your blue tshirt got washed this week.  (Yes; it's folded and stacked with your shorts.)  And she knows what every particle in this house IS and what it belongs to.

I submit to you a piece of evidence.  This little doohickey has been lying on my desk for a week now.  I have no idea what it is, besides the obvious - it's a plastic button from something. We own nothing this shade of green; at least nothing that I am aware of.  It appeared on my desk one day; unclaimed, here it sets. No one knows what it is, where it came from, or who put it here.

I would dust for fingerprints, but I've handled it, so the crime scene has been contaminated.  It's safe as long as it remains solitary, but if it is joined by any other trinket, they will begin to multiply, and then overnight my desk will have a half-dozen baby doodads scattered around.  But as sure as I throw it away, someone will ask me if I've seen a little green plastic button.

Last night we had Chicken Cordon Bleu. I had chicken thighs on the menu, but a) I could not find the recipe I planned to use and b) I had lots of breasts and no thighs on hand.  Of course I test drove some of my new pans.  I was a little nervous about the chicken, but I heated and oiled the saute pan just like the cooking video said...and it worked - the chicken did not stick and the brown bits came up as soon as I hit them with chicken stock.  Having a 3-quart saucepan to boil pasta is simply marvelous.  I have no idea how I got by without it for so many years.

I would have to say the chicken recipe fell a little short of my expectations:  the sauce was too thick and the chicken got dried out after the recommended 25 minutes in the oven.  Live and learn:  next time we'll make more sauce (using a creamier, melt-ier cheese in the sauce, saving the Gruyere to lay on top of the ham) and stick the whole thing under the broiler just long enough to brown and bubble the sauce and cheese.

Clean Desk Mission: Day 14

It's still clean.  (It's no wonder it's rained the past couple of days - I am pretty sure I've shifted some cosmic force in the universe.  Watch out Miami, you may get snowed in this fall if I keep this up.) 

All joking aside, it has been really nice to sit down each morning to a fresh start each day for the past two weeks.  My active notebooks are always within arm's reach (and a few new ones are stowed away for future projects.)

I have to admit that during the course of any given day, the desk can still get cluttered up, but I am disciplining myself to clean it up each night, filing away bills, coupons, and stowing my notebooks back in their place.  As a direct result of keeping my desk clean, I have:

• paid the household bills ahead of schedule this month (usually I'm scrambling to get them paid in the nick of time to avoid late fees);
• gathered my receipts, summarized them in a spreadsheet so we know what we spent on SBV this year - and for what area. (AND I turned it in and received my reimbursement check - woohoo!); 
• compiled all the school supply giveaway notes and emails so we can put THAT project to rest until next year;
• remembered to grab coupons and saved quite a few $$$ this week;
• kept up with all my printouts of new recipes and shopping lists for the past two weeks, which in turn meant we tried several new dishes, some of which were keepers.

For those of you who don't struggle with maintaining control of your desk (and the everyday tasks that flow across it), all I can say is "good for you!"  For me, these accomplishments represent a huge step forward in staying on top of things and balancing my time and energy among all the ongoing projects and daily activities that tug and pull me in dozens of directions each day.

Still white-knuckling my way through this...
Terry

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?

The dreaded four-letter d-word

No, not that one. Another d-word. d-e-s-k. Also answers to "center of my universe," "command central," "arch nemesis," "the black hole," "Bermuda triangle," etc., etc. You get the idea. This relationship is beyond love/hate - it makes the "War of the Roses" (the movie, not the actual war) look like a tale of wedded bliss.

This desk is where I spend the majority of my waking hours, and yet I can't seem to keep any semblance of order, at least not for very long...a day or two at most, and then the detritus slowly builds: papers that should be filed or round-filed, clipped coupons, pens, stamps, paperclips, checkbook, junk mail, is that a bottle of contact lens solution over there? Yep. They all lay here, silently accusing me of sloth and disorganization.

Today is a new day, a time for a fresh start. Today I am cleaning it for real (not just tidying the stacks, or transplanting everything to the floor in my classic Scarlet O'Hara "I'll think about that tomorrow!" maneuver.) Really, truly clean. Filed, tossed, put away. If I'm not heard from in 24 hours, someone put out an APB - you'll know the desk finally swallowed me whole.

In other news, the Dutch oven has been broken in: she gently cradled a pork tenderloin smothered in onions, garlic and seasoning yesterday, at 325 for 2 hours. Yum. The sourdough starter is still going, but it was getting a little watery, so I drained off the hooch and thickened up the flour addition. It bubbles, but doesn't double in size.

Weather-wise, it seems we are deep in the icy frost pocket of winter's thick coat. The 10-day forecast is bleak - the best we can hope for is to edge toward the upper 40s towards the end of the month, but not before we have a few more brushes with some snow next week.

Update: Okay, so it's late afternoon and the desk is *almost* done. (Where have I heard that before?) And as a reward for digging to the bottom? I found a sale ad for new Fiestaware. Square Fiestaware. Be still my beating heart...

Second Monday in January

Believe it or not, it is national "Clean Off Your Desk Day." Yes, it's apparently an actual holiday - I found a reference to it in Boardroom.com's Bottom Line. I beat the rush and cleaned mine off yesterday, which could explain why there's a chance of snow again today. Cleaning off my desk is such an unusual activity, it might just trigger a weather phenomenon.

In other news, our dinner party was so much fun, thanks to our guests who joined us for a wonderful meal and time to just sit and talk...something we don't do enough of with friends. Tonight is Bunco, and yes, it does involve dice and money, but it's not gambling. I'm making a pot of potato soup to take with, as the weather is still very much wintery-feeling.

Middle child had his wisdom teeth taken out today. I guess oral surgery has changed - what was a half-a-day ordeal is now 30 minutes from start to finish.