I worked my butt off today–well, it seemed like 99 boxes–and now I’m down to one. One box to rule the world, or at least ruin my day. The Box I’ve been carting with me through three moves and five years. The Ur Box. As in “Ur, I don’t wanna.” One box and then I can go sort through all the books sitting on the floor in the hall.

One box:

Das Box.

Along with cleaning out the office, I regularly clean out the spam filter for this site. While occasionally there’s something funny, like the credit lenders who put “Exciting review on! I love this write ups!” in the message field which some how does not increase my faith in their professionalism, mostly it’s boring and occasionally it’s vile. So while I try to scan for your lost messages, sometimes I just delete everything.

I am tempted to do the same thing with the boxes.

There are a lot of boxes in this office. I looked at them and thought, “I just can’t,” and pulled everything out of my closet instead, covering the bed with clothes that are as mixed as the boxes. There’s good stuff in there but it’s mixed in with stuff that’s not my size and stuff that’s not my color and stuff that’s not my personality–where did I get all these damn blazers?–so it’s time to clear that out, too. Of course there I have to try to forget how much I paid for the stuff I’m putting in the box for my sister-in-law’s church’s rummage sale. With the boxes in the office, that’s not a problem because the stuff is most papers and, well, junk.

It’s the sheer boring extent of it. That fifteen minute rule is a good one because even telling myself I can do this one box at a time, I’m screaming. Which is bad anyway because there are only two days left after today, and there are at least four boxes over there still, including the Box from Hell, which is easily going to take one day. So I’m thinking this is why cleaning out paper is so depressing. It takes forever, it’s dusty, it’s boring, and it’s endless. I could just cart the boxes out to the trash, but I might miss something. Which brings us back to Fly Lady’s fifteen minutes a day. This is a smart thing. If I was doing fifteen minutes on the boxes, I could stand it. It’s the hour it takes to get through one, only to find that the only thing worth keeping is six pencils and a nail clipper. I’m not getting enough bang for my buck. Or box. Only it’s not the box, i have no trouble going through any number of boxes on Christmas Day.

Really, if you’re looking at boxes, go for the fifteen minutes a day. Me, I want to get the office done in twelve days. So tomorrow . . .

God, I hate boxes.