I blame myself.

Two pieces of paper were left alone overnight and suddenly my desk was awash in clutter.

Despite my ‘design for success’ plan, I hadn’t considered the genealogical documents that cannot be addressed immediately. Where do those random various-surname documents go? Certificates and notes started to collect on my desk and distract me, no, more than that; they prevented me from doing the projects I wanted to do on my desk space. Time to do something about it.

I dove deep last Filing Friday.

The shelves I mentioned here needed to be repainted with a glossy finish to prevent marring. I took everything off each shelf and stacked the items in order. While the paint dried, I started going through the file boxes, photo containers and storage bins. I sorted, scanned, recycled, shredded, labeled and filed until the cows came home (and we don’t even have cows).

The process was both exhausting and exhilarating. I found things I’d forgotten I had (imagine that!) and even ended up with an empty file box.

On Saturday I went through the loose papers on my desk and found homes for every one of them. My formerly empty file box now houses surname-labeled hanging files, the place for those documents that cannot be immediately addressed. I made ‘official’ labels for my file boxes and photo containers and storage bins and returned everything to their respective shelves.

I felt such a sense of accomplishment and peace! The surface of my desk was free of paper and could be used, in its entirety, for any of the items on my genealogical to do list.

I took a surname folder out of the To-Do File Box and began.