Clean sweep

The construction documents (CDs) for the MHRC Radiology department were due today at 4pm. The consultants emailed their specs before then, but their stamped and signed drawings had yet to make it across town when I left at 5pm. No worries--Alex wouldn't be able to sign our drawings until tomorrow afternoon, so there was no real rush.

I still have some lingering things to do with some issues that came up on the endo procedure suite over there at MHRC, and Jann says she has some specs on yet another project she needs my help with, and I'm glad to do it. But what I really need to do (and what I started doing for an hour this afternoon) is clean my desk. Half of cleaning my desk is archiving all my Wheatlands files. Now that the project is over, I can finally put major files and drawings and product submittals into those banker's boxes and file them away in our basement storage area, away from my cluttered desk. The other half of cleaning is literally cleaning. It's finally looking at every piece of paper and either filing it properly or tossing it. It's looking at every knickknack and deciding what stays and what goes and what goes home instead of staying at the office. It's digging through rolls and rolls and stacks and stacks of drawings under my three-sided desk and figuring out how much of this crap is supposed to be filed. it's sifting through pens, rubber bands, paper clips, business cards, product info from years of vendor presentations to see what's good and what's out of date.

The whole clean-your-damn-desk-Pixie-seriously-what-are-you-waiting-for thing has been creeping slowly into my psyche as I've been coming up on today's deadline. However, it's really been pushed to the front of my consciousness while reading a book I checked out from the library, Julie Morgenstern's Never Check Email in the Morning, which includes a whole chapter about getting organized. As I read it, I realized that my office messiness had caught up with me now that I'm working on several projects at once. While my desk may never be immaculate, what with all the large-format papers on and around it, I've got to get a better handle on the piles of stuff. It's gotten to the point where I put something down and within five seconds cannot find it again. Not cool. That's very unlike me. Hence, the cleaning begins. Even better is that I mentioned my need to clean and archive to Jann, who was all for giving me the room. "Archiving Wheatlands will get rid of a lot of your mess, " she said. "I can totally give you a few days to dig out from under all that--I completely understand."

I need to purge, file, toss, and even wipe things down with Lysol at this point. It's that bad. But in the words of the Little River Band, hang on, help is on the way. Help in the form of a large blue recycling bin. I wonder what color my desktop is beneath all that paper?