Lost and Found: Hours 18 to 15

OK. The great office clean-up started today. You saw the before pictures yesterday. If you missed them, click here to see my gosh-awful mess.

But wait! I still have before and after picture for you, so hold onto your knickers.

Just in case you have your own little shop of horrors in your house, each day I'm going to go over what I did, step by step. Today's tasks, in order:

1. Take all baskets, boxes, and other containers of "stuff" out of my room and into the dining room.
2. Remove all random piles of paper from the floor and move them into the dining room. Return things to their homes on the bookshelves if they have migrated to the floor. 
3. Remove everything else from the floor that isn't nailed down or a major piece of furniture. Put it in the dining room.
4. Clear off all horizontal surfaces and put the papers, etc., in plastic bins to sort through later. Put bins in the dining room. (Yes, I know this is how I've gotten off-track in the past. But this time I'm actually going to sort through the bins, laundry baskets, and other boxes. None of them may re-enter the office.)
5. Thoroughly clean the desk area. Vacuum, then mop the floor. (Note: Even though Izabel comes and cleans our house once every two weeks, it's been literally months since my office has been cleaned. I banned her from the room ages ago because there was nothing ... literally nothing ... she could do.)
6. Choose a new rug for my newly cleaned floor from the lovely ones donated to the cause by my friends. Thank you Gina and Jackie!
7. Sit back and bask in the glow.

Do you notice a theme here? Everything moved out of my office and into the dining room. So here are my before and after pictures for the day.

Here is my dining room BEFORE...

Note: See my husband sitting there? He's taking a few sick days to deal with a ruptured disc in his back and a root canal/crown application scheduled for today. Little does he know the tsunami that is going to engulf him shortly.


And here it is  AFTER.

Note: Poor guy. Still trying to work. Only now he's had a root canal and he's surrounded by all my stuff. Not sure which one is more painful.

But look at my office! It's so neat and clean! Herb suggested we just take everything out of the dining room and use it tomake a bonfire in the backyard.























In the course of moving all of this stuff around, I managed to find a few interesting things:

• Nepotism: A mix tape that a sorority sister made for me in college. Yes, I said tape. I listened to it in the car today because it's the only cassette player we still have. Thank you, Thelma, my dear 2000 Suburban. I love you for your tape deck.

• The missing handle for my file cabinet. It was missing a handle? Who knew? Not me. There's been stuff piled in front of it for so long, I couldn't see.

• The plug for the bottom of Joshua's piggy bank. When I realized it was missing, I was very disappointed in his irresponsibility. Oooooops. 

• A portfolio with a bunch of Sandy's papers from elementary school. In first grade he wrote a lot of papers about how much he loved his brand-new baby brother, Joshua. So sweet! Made me tear up.

• Four numbered, unframed P. Buckley Moss prints that I purchased 11 years ago. I've been looking for those! Not sure how long they've been loose under my big pink chair.

• Quite a collection of Tootsie Pops. I love Tootsie Pops. But apparently, I never actually eat them.

• The corner where one of the cats apparently peed. All over the closing papers from the purchase of our house, including the warranty deed. Ewwwwww! Now who's irresponsible?

COMING UP TOMORROW... The bookcases. The goal: reducing their contents by about 1/3. 

Finish Well.