A Worthwhile Reason to Stay up Half the Night

In my efforts to keep a reasonably clean, neat home, there are a few places in my house that ABSOLUTELY DRIVE ME BONKERS, and this is one of them: the dreaded "telephone counter."  Horrible!! 

 I KNOW the basic principle to avoid such a disaster area: "only handle each piece of paper once, and immediately decide what to do with it" and blah blah blah.  But obviously, I'm not very good at that!

Recently things were coming to a head, and my level of frustration with this spot was increasing exponentially.  So last night, I decided to do something about it.

 I stayed up late (really late) so I could tackle this project, one piece of paper, one book, one school assignment, one "priceless drawing" from my kids, one "important" piece of mail at a time.  I was DETERMINED last night to make a difference in this one solitary spot of my house.

I'm not going to tell you how late I stayed up.  I don't want my dad to worry.  ;-)

 But when I finally gave up the battle against paper clutter, the counter looked like this.

 Not perfect, but significantly better.

I think with one more late-night, who-needs-sleep-anyway session, I could conquer the whole counter and completely eliminate my infamous paper piles in this spot!

Could I KEEP it clean and clutter-free?  THAT is the question, and I'm honestly not sure of the answer.  But I'm feeling inspired enough by the progress last night that I'm motivated to stay up late again tonight, working on this area.

How far will I get with this project?  Time will tell...  :)