There is a drawer in our filing cabinet that has plagued me for years. Years.
I always knew I’d have to deal with it, but I really, really didn’t want to. I always managed to convince myself that it wasn’t that important to get it organized. It was only financial stuff.
Oh, wait….That’s actually really important.
I managed to keep ignoring it, anyway.
And then we moved, and I knew that I REALLY needed to do something about it, because moving something in a completely chaotic state does not feel good. If you move it in bad shape, it will be in bad shape at the other end, too.
But when you have loads of boxes to unpack, and tons and tons of other stuff to organize, it’s pretty easy to ignore the Drawer of Complete Awfulness.
I’m not really sure what happened to bring about change, but for some mysterious reason, I woke up the other morning feeling ready to do something drastic. It was time to tackle The Drawer.
Ben was gone for the evening, and so I decided that as soon as the girls were in bed, I would begin.
Ben called to see how my day was going, and I told him about my plans to be productive, but confessed that I was pretty tired, and an evening of Downton Abbey was sounding much better than the Drawer of Complete Awfulness.
He suggested that I just work like crazy for half an hour, and see how much I got done. Then I could relax for the rest of the evening.
Since this sounded like a good idea, I set my timer and got to work.
People, I was finding receipts from 1998!! Oh, my word, it was bad.
And it was all completely organized in 45 minutes.
I was going to stop working after half an hour, but I could tell I was pretty close to being done, so I just finished the job.
I’m finding that dreaded tasks often do not take nearly as long as they seem. When you actually get down to it, the nastiness can get taken care of fairly quickly.
What’s your area? What’s the job that’s been weighing on you for a long, long time?
Just think – you could be 45 minutes away from freedom.
DO IT!!!
As I’m basking in my victory over The Drawer of Complete Awfulness Which is No Longer, I must tell you – it is totally worth it. Whatever your dreaded task is,you can do it, and it probably won’t take as long as you think….
Ordinary Days 
Oh. My. Goodness! I just now told myself I have one hour to clean out my email box and there was your email at the top of the list! Check back with me at 3:10 Eastern and see if I’m done! Timers are good things to have – also help with children who don’t want to do a job – ask them to work hard for a reasonable amount of time. I love timers!!
It took an hour and fifteen minutes but I did it! Love an empty inbox!
That’s amazing! I love it that you reported back with your progress!:)
OK. Here goes. My Dreaded Drawer has robbed me of peace long enough. Seriously, mine looks like a 25-hr job. I’ll go set my timer for one hour.
Good for you! How did it go?!
I spent about 4 hours on it yesterday, which is thanks to you, as I didn’t think I had the motivation to even look at it! There’s probably 2 hours left, which looks a lot more manageable than it did. I threw out the box the papers were in…transferred them to a filing tray. My husband also joined in the sorting yesterday, which was quite the bonus!