Kicking off the Work Year

So, today's the first real workday of the new year, the one in which I'm going to change everything, and I haven't made such a great start, since I slept rather late due to staying up reading rather late. At least this time the book I stayed up to finish only disappointed me rather than infuriating me.

I did have a very productive weekend, though. Saturday was nice and warm, though very windy, so since my patio is sheltered, it was a good day for getting work done out there. I got the space cleared off and then assembled my storage box and put everything away in there. I also swept off the patio and pulled the dead moonflower vines off the trellis. Then I got in a good half hour of office organizing. Sunday there was a drastic temperature change and the headache that always comes with it, so I was a bit less productive, but I still did some office organizing. I'm very close to being done with sorting everything.

I've discovered that the Emergency Clean seems to have been the cause of most of the office mess, as that's what most of the boxes have been. When I need to drastically clean the living room quickly, then everything that's sitting out gets shoved into a box and tossed into the office. That's stuff like newspapers or magazines that have something in them that I want to clip and keep, clippings or documents that need to be filed, or things that need to be shredded. And then the box gets forgotten. I've now thrown out, clipped and filed all the stuff in those boxes, and I have a big stack of things to shred.

Now I'm down to the Clean Sweep boxes. There used to be a home improvement reality show about organizing in which professional organizers and decorators tackled a problem room by forcing a clean sweep. Everything in the room was removed and dumped on the lawn, where the victims were forced to sort it into "keep," "sell" and "toss" piles, with the "keep" pile limited by the size of the tarp available for it (and sometimes they had to go through that pile and sort it again). There was the usual manufactured reality show drama of couples or families arguing over things to keep, and then they did silly competitions for the yard sale. Meanwhile, the organizers and decorators would re-do the room and arrange storage for the few things they were keeping.

Well, the summer that Enchanted, Inc. was on submission, I got bored and stressed and needed a distraction, so I decided that the way to clean and organize my office was to play Clean Sweep. I didn't move out all the furniture, but I removed everything from the desk and put it in boxes that I moved out onto the loft. Then I was gradually working my way through the boxes and putting things away. But midway through that project, the book sold, and then I had to deal with copy edits and had to write the sequel, so the boxes sat there on the loft, and whenever I needed something in them, I'd have to go digging. Then in an emergency clean moment (I think when a reporter wanted to interview me in my home) they got shoved into the office closet. I think at least one box is keepsakes, but we'll see how much I want or need to keep. The keepsake thing is going to be my problem because I keep finding things that I don't necessarily need and might not miss if I forgot they were there, but finding and seeing them gives me joy so I can't make myself deliberately toss them.

Weirdest thing found in yesterday's cleaning: My contractor badge from a former client, where I sometimes had to work on-site. The weird thing about it was that the sweater I was wearing in the ID photo was the same one I was wearing yesterday when I found it. I guess over the years it got demoted from work attire to wear-around-the-house attire.

Today I need to meet my writing time goal (and I'd like to get closer to finishing this Christmas movie screenplay now that the holidays are over and I'm no longer in the mood). I also need to do some marketing/publishing work and do another half hour or so of office sorting, though first I probably need to put away some of the things I found that were very out of place (like the screwdriver I found in one box). So far, I'm being good and sticking to the work rules I've established, and I need to coast on that enthusiasm long enough to make it a new habit.