Clean Up, Clean Out (But No Quilts)

I've been cleaning my "office." It's been a kind of a catch-all or junk room for most of the last year. My desk is in there and I was really avoiding the room because it was so messy.

Over the last couple of weekends I've gone through the closet and trashed a lot of stuff and brought four bins of stuff to Goodwill. I've shredded eight bags of paperwork. In fact, I had to buy a new shredder because mine died. It was 10 years old, so I wasn't too broken up about it. The new one is much quieter.

So here is what the room looks like now.

It's a vast improvement. I've also sorted through all the bookcases and the drawers in the bureau (which you can't see in the photo.)

Which got me to going through the drawer in the nightstand.  See those wire bins on  the chair in the photo above?

Here's the Before:

Now for the After:

So how did I get from the Office to the Bedroom? It was the pens. I had almost a dozen pens in the drawer. For what?  As I sorted through various drawers in different rooms I realized I had pens in every room in the house except the bathroom. Now they are all in one place.

I mean, really, how many pens do I need in my nightstand?

Notes: The two-dollar bill is something of a good luck charm; I use the post-its for bookmarks, and the only charging cable in the drawer now is for my iPhone.  This is SO much easier.

When this room is done, I'll be moving into the sewing studio to give it the same kind of ruthless treatment.