I am actually gaining control over the clutter in the office but I am worried that I haven’t thrown away enough stuff. 1 huge over-sized basket of file stuff and that’s it so far. Well, plus 7 boxes of things that didn’t need to be stored in my office went into the garage. And 1 bag for Goodwill. Still I’ll be happy if I can a) actually have enough room to work in there without feeling claustrophobic and b) actually FIND something when I need it. I know I should sort through the books – they are stacking up vertically on top of the horizontal stacks – but it is so hard for me to get rid of books. I think because when I first moved from California I sold all my books, including the old first editions I had that were worth some money, in order to finance my move. I’ll never get a lot of those books back again but I am loathe to let go of what I have. And we will need to, soon, I imagine as throughout the house we have over 5,000 books. Sigh. It is a comfort to me to see them all. My security blanket.

I have adopted a strange method of sorting what is left in the paper files, I know you’re not supposed to touch a piece of paper a gazillon times but hey, this is working so I am going for it. I have a big stack of paper in front of me and as I pick up a piece, if I know immediately where it goes, I put it away, if not, it goes to the new to-be-sorted pile. Mostly I am find things like receipts (Oh yeah, I’m gonna need those at tax times) and scraps of paper that have contact info or writing ideas. Once I’m done with the easy stuff I’ll have to go through it all again. This could take a while. I have 4 Xerox paper boxes filled with my paper that needs sorting.

Off to wrap birthday presents and drive to Sacramento for my daughter’s 23rd birthday and my grandson’s 1st birthday. They were born on the same day. Expect to see many indulgent grandma pictures upon my return. I haven’t seen him since Christmas.