3rd Update on Office Project

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On Wednesday, 6/14, I spent a total of about 3-1/2 hours working in the office. I didn’t intend to work so long, but I had pulled up a video on NetFlix to watch that didn’t really require much actual watching, just listening. It was a two-hour video and I told myself I would just putz around a bit while I watched so I wouldn’t feel so guilty about not doing anything constructive. I started out by moving the boxes of paper that were so overfilled they had become piles. I decided to disconnect my desktop computer and pull out all the wires. I wiped everything down to get rid of the thick coating of dust that had accumulated. I found I had tons of things connected to my computer. A few were disconnected but never reconnected because I want to reevaluate whether I even use them. I figure I will reconnect them if and when I need them.

One thing led to another and before I knew it, I could see some real progress. As the saying goes, things had to get much worse before they could get better. I felt like I was making a huge mess when I moved things out of the way to wipe the desktop and get rid of all dust bunnies hiding everywhere. Apparently, I don’t have a dust allergy. I tried arranging things a little differently but discovered they wouldn’t work in the new places I thought I would put them, so things went mostly back the way they were but without the piles of paper and clutter. Here are the before and after photos.

Right side under hutch (Before)

 

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I used some Velcro Straps I had gotten cheap on Amazon to bundle each cord up neatly and keep everything from getting tangled.

Everything looked so good when it was all clean and arranged the way I wanted it that I took a photo. Then I realized that I would need that photo to remind me of how good it would look later because I had to put the piles of paper back on the desk, but I put them all in one area so it is like a mountain I must scale. I have accomplished enough now that I can see the possibilities and I am unwilling to accept anything but the finished project now. I even worked on the bulletin board so it wouldn’t mess up the photos. Here is the real state of things with the paper piles back in place.

I will have to tackle the paper piles next because they are going to make me crazy if I don’t. At least this time while I am sorting I will have a clear desktop to spread the sorting piles out on.

I had to do the area under the desk too since I was fishing cords and rearranging the places they were plugged in. Everything under there got a good sweeping and wiping too before anything was put back under. I even took the rug outside and gave it a good shaking.

There isn’t much of a difference in the way things look in the photo of the left side under the desk, but the floor is clean at least.

I am realizing that what I have accomplished thus far, as impressive as it seems, has been the easy part. I also realize that it was necessary to do things in this order because I needed to see some significant progress in order to motivate myself to keep going. The sorting of the paperwork and contents of the file drawers and other storage spaces is going to be much harder. Hubby brought me a floppy drive so I can begin transferring all of the scanned photos on 3.5″ floppy disks to the external hard drive. This is going to be a time-consuming part of cleaning out the china cabinet. Progress is being made and I am loving the improvements in my workspace. Now I find myself wondering how quickly I can get the rest of the room done. I think getting it done by the end of June, while it would be wonderful, is not a very realistic goal. It is kind of funny that I made this a goal for the year and then panicked at the end of May because I had let 5 months pass without any progress and now I am thinking it would be great to really focus and get it done in the next 2 weeks. We will see. Stay tuned!

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