Deadline De-Cluttering

What's wrong this picture? Carter is up, dressed and off to breakfast with my friends while I face a day of cleaning.

Lucky.

Actually it was very nice for an old friend of ours to pick him up and take him to breakfast with the "guys" -- a retired (or close to retired) bunch who meet Tuesday mornings. Apparently they welcome the younger set on occasion since Carter met with approval. Apparently what they discuss must fall under some Gentleman's Code because he didn't share a peep. Only that he had fun.

Good for him. I really can't get distracted from my tasks at hand. Remember my New Year's resolution last year (and the year before and the year before) about de-cluttering? I figure I might as well attack that before new resolutions are required. Frankly, I could draw the name of a room (any room) out of a hat and go at it. But I decided to start with one of my "Oh my god" rooms... the office.

One good thing about our computer room is that in addition to two desks and two filing cabinets, there is a closet. So obviously there is a place for everything. It just has to get from Point A (usually the desk) to Point B (a file or drawer or box).

I realized today I couldn't start cleaning off the desk first because if something belonged in the closet, there was no perfect place for it there. It actually made the most sense to start with the closet. Then I could create those perfect places to store some of the items from the desk in an organized fashion. It's a domino effect of sorts.

The closet has 3 shelves plus space under the bottom one. The two top ones hold our family tree stuff (we each get our own shelf). The bottom two house office-type stuff -- batteries, light bulbs and boxes for every piece of software or digital product we've purchased in the past several years -- plus other items that don't have a logical home.

Cleaning and/or organizing it hadn't been done in ... forever. Ever actually. So that is how I spent my day. I did get a break to take Carter to the bowling alley and myself to the chiropractor (finally). He had a great time bowling (and says we should do that much more often). And I had a great time finally getting my back in order. I will do that much more often. I need return trips to the back-cracker tomorrow and Friday so I can be in tip-top shape for my return to work next week! Oh joy.

After our little break, I returned to the closet and, two full garbage bags later, have some semblance of order there. My big finds of the day were an old framed newsroom award for my "Patrick Swayze comes to town" story back in 1997 and some money in an old birthday card. I got excited when I recognized my mom's handwriting but then realized it was for hubby because she signed it "LeRoy and Marlys." (She would just sign mine "Dad and Mom".) Dang.

I gave hubby the money since, well, it's his. Plus he can use it. He and Carter bought a new baseball bat today. They already put it to use in the indoor batting cage tonight. I'll have to go watch next time. This time I had to stay on task.

I may be on vacation but I still have deadlines!