…something in the mail from Netflix.

This is what my desk looked like on Thursday night. Neat piles. Easy to find everything that needs to be found. A pleasant place to sit and work.

This is what my desk looks like right now, the way it looked by yesterday afternoon, and the way it looks most of the time. Piles and piles and piles. There’s hardly room to use the tracker ball. It’s amazing that the phone happens to be on top – usually it gets buried. I would say the photo qualifies for an I Spy book, except that there is no harmony in this picture.

And the truly frustrating thing about this is that it’s not (all) me. Yes, I am responsible for the phone book and that box that contains CDs of Christmas music. But that isn’t my ruler, not my drawing of a boat. Unseen are the two dozen other pieces of priceless artwork and an Army beret that does not even belong to my husband. The problem is that when I tell the kids to clear the dining room table, they simply move everything to my nearby desk. What they don’t realize is that the vast bulk of their artwork goes right into the recycle bin.

Perhaps one thing I’ll do next year is get an art bin and train my children to store their things there. As for the beret that belongs in the dress up box? Maybe that box is too full and needs to be pared down…