Baby Step #1

Christmas is over and the new year is around the bend so now, of course, it's time to obsess about "getting my shit together." Again.

We've made lots of plans about things we want to do around the house, starting with getting rid of a lot of stuff that we don't need, much of which nobody needs.

We know that we can't tackle it all at once, and we're hoping to not burn ourselves out, by taking it slow and making baby steps in the right direction. It won't get better overnight, but every little thing we do will make things a little better, and a little closer to how we'd like things to be around here.

This weekend, I made my first concrete step toward that, and cleaned my desk, inside and out. I didn't take an actual "before" photo, but if you look over Peeper's shoulder in this old photo, you can see a very small part of the mess. I think you can get the general idea. It was pretty awful.

And after:

Here's the wide view. I've gotten the main surface cleared off several times in the past, but I don't know when got rid of the piles of "don't know what to do with it, so I'll just shove it under here" stuff, or when I last tackled the top.

Almost everything you see here is things that I actually use fairly regularly. The shoebox under the hutch is a few items that need to move to the "things to keep forever" box, when I make room in it.

This was bulging with papers. One of the sections (pending bills, sadly) is even cracked, from over-stuffing.

I'm pretty sure that I've never actually decluttered inside the hutch, although I have straightened up in there a few times. How long has it been? This side held all my computer stuff, including drivers and documentation for devices I no longer own - including some on floppy disk; yep, that's save to trash. I thought the Windows 2000 installation disks were bad, but there was also a book called "Getting Started With Windows 97." No more.

The other side held "officey" sort of things, most of which I had no use for. Much better. All the "I need this in reach" binders and such are neatly filed in here.

And, why yes, you do see a ziplock containing a roll of 35 mm film and three disposable cameras. Those should be interesting to see, when I finally get around to getting them developed. (I am told there is a camera shop in town that still does that.)

Not pictured: A box of things to redistribute around the house, a box to give away, a box to go to the basement, and about seven garbage bags, headed to the curb.