Where Do You Blog?

Centsational Girl is having a “Where Do You Blog?” Linky party.  When I first saw this party, I knew there was no way I would be sharing MY blogging location.  Our office is an awful mess and it’s only redeeming value is that it has a door to it that I can close if I can’t stand to see it anymore.

As I looked at all the pictures of all the beautiful blogging spaces, though, I knew I had to post just to give a voice to all of us who have awful, messy offices (please, please, tell me I’m not the only one!).  Maybe I’ll start a self-help group - Messy Office Anonymous (MOA) – where we can all get together and realize that it’s OK to have a messy office (or at least to find pictures of other offices that are even WORSE than ours). 

Hi, my name is Diane and I have a messy office:

I think I actually wrote a blog post about cleaning it up one day.  I swore I would keep it clean, but apparently the filing system is just not working because the papers have returned with a vengeance and filled up every available space.

I also hate all the furniture in it.  I have plans to redo the space at some point, but there are other more pressing matters.  Like finishing the stairway where I ripped up all the carpet or finding the perfect fabric for pillows in my family room or re-painting the gigantic walls in my family room, dining room, and entry way or my bedroom or…well…you get the idea.  It’s low down on the list and the fact that I can’t even seem to keep it slightly clean makes me not want to bother with it at all!

So, for now, here (in all it’s glory) is where I blog:

I’m so proud.  

How to Spend a Sunny Saturday

I finally got the organizing/Spring cleaning bug yesterday. I’ve been waiting and waiting and it just came on suddenly Friday morning. Of course, I had to work on Friday, so Saturday morning I asked my husband which room he thought was in the most need of a thorough cleaning. After some discussion, he and I both reluctantly agreed that it should be the office. We were reluctant because it looks like a bomb exploded in there. It’s really awful, which is why I’m going to share pictures!

Look at our cluttered work surfaces.

This is next to my husband’s desk. This area drives me nuts!

Here’s next to my desk. I’ve had the shredder and a pile of papers waiting to be shredded sitting there forever.

And here’s the closet *shudder*…

As you can see, we had our work cut out for us. It was so overwhelming; we didn’t know where to start! So, in my usual fashion, I just started pulling everything out of the closet and putting it in piles. My husband started on his corner.

As you might imagine, it got much worse before it got better:

Here’s our hallway during:

I paid Thing 1 and Thing 2 to do some shredding for us and, while, they didn’t finish it, they did make a dent in it. We found homes for most of the things on the floor and put a bunch of stuff in the donate and Craigslist piles and now the room looks like this:

I know that closet doesn’t look much better, but there were a bunch of things we just had to store in there. I’m pretty pleased that I got the filing cabinet in there, though. That helps a bit. The most exciting thing, though, was that I found an entire box full of homemade Raspberry Jam while cleaning out the closet. Thing 1 has been missing Raspberry Jam for a month now, but I told her she’d have to wait a bit until we can get some more raspberries. She was one happy camper when I showed her those.

This is my husband’s corner now. There’s still a pile of stuff in it, but it’s organized and I know what I need to get to help corral it.

The room is much less horrifying now and I feel like we accomplished a ton today, but we still have a long way to go. We really need to go through our filling cabinet and get rid of old files and organize what remains. And I need to figure out some sort of filing system that will be easy enough that I actually *file* things as they come in, rather than piling them on top of my desk until the pile is so huge things start falling on the floor.

Plus, I *hate* almost everything in this room (except my computer, of course)! The desk is gi-normous and everything is so yellow! I have plans for my husband to meet a great little site called Knock Off Wood this spring. There’s a desk plan there that I think will work very nicely. And the yellow paint definitely needs to go. I’m done with yellow!

But, baby steps. For now, at least I can see the desk and the floor and walking into the room doesn’t raise my blood pressure (well, not too much)…