Digging for Treasure

This week I came home to San Francisco to visit the family, take care of wedding business and believe it or not, to clean. Yes, clean. That was one of the things I had on my agenda: to clean up Mom and Dad's place. Well, nobody has ever had to worry about Dad when it comes to cleaning and organizing. In fact, my super anal/organized brothers learned their habits from Dad, himself. Meanwhile, my sister and I learned the not-so-organized method and madness from Mom. In any case, over the past few years I've been trying to become more organized.

Messy is one thing, which I am. Absolute chaos is another, which is what Mom's room was like. Just imagine if you took a stack of papers and threw them up in the air as high as you could and allowed it to settle wherever, that is what Mom's desk looked like. And even I set limits when it comes to messiness these days. Needless to say, I took it upon myself to clean the room up (I couldn't stand it any longer). Interestingly enough, here is a list of the things I found at her desk:

1. Christmas photos from 2004
2. A tube of Ben-Gay
3. Random jewelry consisting of necklaces, rings, earrings all mixed within stacks of papers.
4. Bank statements from 2003.
5. Child psychology notes from the 1970's. Could be 1960's.
6. A nail filer
7. Pens without ink
8. Paperclips
9. Hole punchers
10. Numerous business cards
11. Numerous restaurant receipts from 2004-2005
12. Pilates instructional booklets
13. Dental floss
14. A brief case with an inch of dust sitting on it with papers dating back to 1989
15. A brand new credit card that has not been activated, yet but is expiring soon

Any of this sound familiar?