“One of the advantages of being disorganized is that one is always having surprising discoveries.”
― A.A. Milne

When I worked outside of the home, my desk was immaculate.  Everything had a place, and everything was in it’s place at all times.  Of course, the desk was entirely mine.  I didn’t have to share it with anyone, and I didn’t have anyone who felt like they could come and dump there crap here – which apparently, I do not have at home.

So what I end up with is a desk that serves as a catch-all.  Papers from school?  I get them.  Books and magazines that someone can’t reach to put on their book shelves?  They end up here.  Stuff no one is sure what to do with?  Dump it on Mommy’s desk and either we’ll never see it again, or Mommy will figure out what to do with it.

Done.  Today, I am finished being the toxic wasteland of crap my kids can’t – or won’t – put away.  I am taking back the one space in the house I feel I shouldn’t have to share.

My desk.  The operative word being MY.

I’d like to see the pictures I so lovingly chose frames for so I had the people I love happily smiling at me when I’m in the middle of a 7,243 page term paper on a topic I don’t understand.  I’d like to see the stiletto tape dispenser that was a Christmas gift from someone who still remembers me (and pictures me) from the days when my shoe wardrobe wasn’t primarily Crocs and sneakers.  I’d love to be able to look at the votive holder turned pencil holder that my sister Bean made at the pottery shop not long before she died.

And by the end of the hour, I will be able to do all of those things.  I mean it.  So help me Jeebus.

Here are a few of the before pictures – and I’ll post some afters later today!

Here are the AFTER pictures!!!  YAY me!  Now I dare a child to lay one finger on this desk – the finger will be removed, and the child placed on a Greyhound bus with a tag that says, “Return to Sender, Destination Unknown”.