I’ve arrived at the realization I always come to about now in any of the Twelve Days things: twelve days is a long time. I don’t know how people stood it each Christmas. By about day four of the party, I’d have been saying, “You know, I’ll just take a nap for this one.” But the good news is, the back half of my office is now clean:

And it probably took me twelve days if you count fifteen minutes as a day. Which I can’t so now I have to do the front half of my office:

Technically that’s More Floor, Printing Shelves, Brainstorming Wall, and the bookcase, although the bookcase is really part of the library . . . no, it’s there at the end of my office. It has to be in here, too.

The floor is going to take hours. Ugh. So I’m going to ignore it and do the printer wall. I’m pretty sure I can do that in under an hour. There’s not that much paper to read on there. So here’s the wall:

Big revelation here: Why do I have reference books when I have the internet? So they went except for the crucial stuff like Beyond Jennifer and Jason, and that went on the shelves behind the other desk, so I freed up a lot of space. I put the mailing supplies down at the end because I don’t mail that much (so why do I have so many envelopes?), and then I got to the computer box. I had ten different trackballs and mice (mouses?), one still in the box. Who knew I had a mouse habit? And Bob, if you’re reading this, I appear to have three firewire cables. So :p. Also two phones because I kept switching out phones until I realized the problem was in the line. And two rechargers for something. Probably the old cellphones. Anyway, untangling that took some time. Then there was the universal recharger Bob told me not to buy because it was lousy but I ignored him and it was lousy, so it’s sitting on the floor glaring at me now. Also an ancient Airport; if I ever do a book on UFOs, it’ll be great for the collage. And a hard drive Mollie made me buy that I’ve never figured out how to hook up. It’s hanging out with the universal recharger, smug in its defiance. But basically the shelves were easy. Fifteen, maybe twenty minutes, really.

It was the top that was the time sink. Electronics. Cords. USB ports. Bleah.

I’m going to have to do those boxes on the floor tomorrow, shoving them out of the way to do the printer wall was annoying. But I hate the thought of those damn papers because you have to look at EVERY ONE OF THEM, such a time sink. But in the meantime, here’s the finished printer wall:

I can’t get enough distance on it to show you the whole wall, so take my word for it, it’s clean. And really it was the easiest of the lot so far. Except for hooking up the label printer which still isn’t right. Electronics. Bleah. Thank god i only have one wall of them.