Pack Rat Papers

Yesterday I rolled up my sleeves and went after our office desk.  I learned two things.

1. I should have set aside a week for that desk.
2. Having a 'no kid' room is asking for massive clutter.

No joke.  That office has become the 'it needs to be out of the way/hide it from the kids/I can't loose this/I have no clue where to put this' room.  It's ridiculous.  I would show you a picture but I'm a little embarrassed.  Maybe I'll take one now and when the room gets together I'll show the before and after shots.
The first thing I tackled was this:

I guess I started there for two reasons-because it's been on the office chair (the only office chair) for more than a few weeks and, well, it was on top of the massive office mess.

Perhaps I should explain what this box is.  When I was in Nebraska (in July) my mom said I could go through it and pick out what I wanted before she tossed it.  It's mostly filled with family home evening stuff, read: lessons/activities for kids to teach them about faith, sharing and all that good stuff.  Now I'm a pack rat so the idea of tossing all this potentially fabulous stuff just killed me.  Never the less, I've been trying to learn to let go-so I decided just to skim through the box. 
While in Nebraska I started in and found a few cool things.

Really cool things.

Top two favorite finds:
A letter from my dad to my mom from before I was born.
A letter from my aunt (who died while I was in high school) to my mom.

My skimming stopped there. 
No way could I bear to miss any other gems like that.
But there was also no way I'd get through it all while in Nebraska.  So my sweet, loving, understanding and patient husband piled this box into the back of our minivan (frankly risking an enormous mess every time we opened the trunk) so I could finish sifting through it.
And then I let it sit untouched for weeks . . . fine, months.
But yesterday I finally pulled it out.

An empty box (Yay!) and four piles.  Toss (the big one!), keep, read closer and send to mom.
Then I went through my piles again.
I read through my 'read closer' pile and pulled out the stuff I really wanted and then sat down again with my keep file.  I pulled a Clean Sweep-ever seen that show?  It's on TLC.  They empty out a house (well, I think it's actually 2 or 3 rooms) onto tarps labeled 'Keep', 'Toss' and 'Sell' (for a yard sale they do at the end of the show).  When they get everything out they dump the toss pile and move the keep sign to the empty tarp and start all over again.  So I did, too. 
Maybe that doesn't sound so special to most people, but to a pack rat that's a pretty big deal. 
Perhaps I'll dive into my pack rat psychology theories sometime, but for now just trust me.

And I'm quite proud of myself.  Out of all those papers I've been hanging on to I've left myself with this:

On the left is my keep pile and on the right is stuff to send back to my mom.  Nothing as special as that first time, but a few letters, pictures and some notes us kids wrote to her when we were little.  Don't know if she'll want to keep them but I thought it would be a nice pick me up to read how much your kids adore you:)

Now, I wish this was the end-but not quite.
The last three nights my 20 month old has decided to wake up at 11pm and stay up until about 2:30.  While he was up I wasn't able to do much of anything with my papers and by 2:30 I was wasted . . . and left them on the floor.
Thankfully my keep and mom piles were separated enough that they didn't mix, but this is what my toss pile looks like right now.

This mess is about 6 1/2 feet by 4ish feet (thank you John for laying on the floor so I could better guestimate!).
"But it's Sunday night" you may be thinking.
Well, I'm a huge fan of Sunday being a "day of rest".  Perhaps you think I've lost it, or have completely missed the point.  But for today I was happy to let my kids rifle through the pictures (and there are plenty of cute, wholesome pictures in there). 
Tomorrow I'll throw it all in the box and ask John to carry it out to the recycling for me (it's heavy, I swear!).  Then attack the shelves in the office. 
Okay, fine, I'll be honest with myself.  There are four bookshelves in the office.  I'm not going to get to all of them. 
But I am going to start.