I think I have discovered the root of why the office is so out of control and full of clutter. The problem now is figuring out how not to continue the same patterns in the future.
I’m sure that after seeing pictures of my out-of-control office space in my earlier de-cluttering posts, some may wonder how it is that one room got to be that full of junk and paperwork. The main reason is that the office is the only room on the main floor of our house that has a door on it. This means that if we know that guests are going to be arriving and we need a place to hide the clutter from the other area in the house, into the office it goes! Once the junk is inside, the office door gets shut, and our company is none the wiser!!!
The main culprit in this negative cycle is a pile of papers that accumulates on my kitchen counter until we are hosting a birthday party, dinner party, or other get-together. The pile consists of paperwork, mail, the kids’ artwork, books, and whatever else I haven’t put away properly yet. This is what that accumulation looks like right now:
Now that I have made such progress in the office, I hate to add all that stuff, but tomorrow, we have more than 20 extra people coming over for Dancing Queen’s birthday party. Normally, on the day that people are coming over, I would put all of this pile into a bag or two and throw that bag in the office. I am obviously going to have to stop my habit of letting things pile up in the kitchen if I want to keep the office manageable in the future. In the meantime, I guess today’s de-clutter challenge of finding proper homes for at least 100 items will be taking place in the kitchen!
It is still office related, so no worries.