I’m sure I’ve mentioned before that both my parents were people who liked to save stuff. Dad was more organized about it than Mom but both held on to things that probably should have been let go of. I inherited that trait and/or learned it at an impressionable age. Which is why I’m sitting here starting to type this entry on the card table that serves as my desk and seeing a pile of stuff behind my laptop screen that should definitely not be there. I’ve been meaning to tackle it for a while but instead have just been adding things to it. Now it’s really really time to dig out.

I’ve set up a TV tray table next to me to serve as a sorting area and shall note the sort of things that I’m finding.

Stuff that doesn’t belong on the desk:

1. Empty boxes, bubble mailer, and pill bottle that I need to take the personally identifying information labels off of before I recycle/trash them. (These have now been dealt with.)

2. Full bubble mailer with free COVID tests from the government. These need to be taken out and put in the hall closet with the other tests we have on hand. (These have now been dealt with.)

3. Bag that Christmas socks go into, waiting for the ones we’ve worn this season to get washed and put back into it so they can get stored with the Christmas stuff when we take down the decorations and put them away for another year.

4. Small paper shopping bag with handles that I got from the optometrist when I picked up my new glasses a couple months ago. (Put in recycling.)

5. Spare eyeglasses in their cases. (Relocated to another room.)

6. Box of fake nails with the leftovers from when I wore this set some time back. (Relocated.)

7. Paperback book I had to order online for a reading challenge. Probably won’t re-read it, so should pass on to a little free library.

8. Small flashlight, eye mask, hat for sleeping when it’s very cold. All this belongs in my travel kit.

9. USB car charger and USB charging brick.

10. Flexible tripod for digital camera.

Stuff that belongs on the desk:

1. To do list on 3 x 5 sticky note pad. It works for me to write down what I want to do first on one half and stuff to do later on the other. The later half sometimes gets torn off and stuck to the next sheet on the pad, so I don’t have to re-write the items. Seeing the right there next to me helps me remember what I wanted to do in a way that burying them on a note app on my phone does not.

2. Phone, stylus, pen.

3. iPod nano. Yes, I still use it. It lives in the electronics/cords case that I carry in my tote bag, but it’s on the desk right now so I can add more podcasts to it.

4. Card file box with the “change sheets” card in it I mentioned the other day.

5. Case for computer glasses, which are on my face right now, plus the non-computer glasses I took off to put these on.

6. Small spray bottle of eyeglass cleaner. (Just corralled into a soft-sided free standing pencil holder I also found on the desk. It’s the right size for this cleaner and my computer glasses case plus has a pocket for a lens cleaning cloth.)

7. Mail I need to sort through. So much mail. I pull out and deal with bills as they arrive (most are on autopay but I’ve had a spate of medical bills to deal with recently), but I let everything else pile up because it’s not urgent and often not interesting.

8. Christmas cards we’ve received which I need to do something with.

So, more things on the desk that belong elsewhere than things that live on the desk (or need to be dealt with from the desk, like the mail). Not great, but not surprising. Now at least the things I didn’t deal with while writing this are sorted into like piles so I can more easily see what’s here and keep chipping away at it. It feels good, and I knew it would, but somehow that knowing doesn’t lead to keeping it organized.

*****
On this date in 2022: Not Quite a Year in Books
2021: Girls and Boys
2020: The Topside of Clouds
2019: The Good Kind of Clingy
2018: November Road Trip
2017: Still Flickring
2016: Gettin’ Out of Dodge
2015: Today’s Molehill
2014: Drinking Chocolate
2013: Best Laid Plans
2012: My Mother, The Flapper
2011: Sock Monkey Makes a Friend
2010: Sock Monkey Tries the Dyson Airblade
2009: Monday, Monday
2008: New Toy
2007: Possibilities
2006: A Body in Motion
2005: Winter Count—November
2004: The Quilt That Isn’t
2003: No entry
2002: No entry