Read The Tao of Martha for Free Online

didn’t know it until the baby fell out. I was so happy because I realized that was why I was fat! Wait, I guess that’s the whole story.
    Under all the junk, I unearth three boxes of my favorite kinds of pens, two bags of the mechanical pencils I really like, a pair of Gucci sunglasses, and $17.31 in loose change.
    I also find rock-bottom, because clearly this is what I’ve hit.
    In Good Things for Organizing , Martha suggests I create and stick to a simple filing system, reasoning that this will make my boss proud. Well, I’m the boss of me, and proud is not what I’m feeling right now. But maybe I could be.
    I take a kitchen trash bag and start filling it with all the crap I’ve been lugging around from house to house. In the last two places we’ve lived, we’ve hired movers, so there’s an extra level of shame in knowing I paid people to pack up all this garbage. Were they all, “Maybe they’re sentimental broken wineglass shards”?
    When airplanes crash, the NTSB arranges all the wreck’s detritus on the floor of a hangar so investigators can piece together what led to this great tragedy. I do the same with my desk contents, so I can understand not only where I’ve been, but where I need to go.
    After pondering the wreckage, I begin to sort everything into piles. Martha suggests grouping like items together, so that’s what I do. My pens are in one stack, my pencils in another, as are my fifteen unopened packs of Post-its. Whoa, where did they come from? I can use those! Hey, look at this—I’m already saving money by having unearthed a lifetime supply of sticky notes.
    My desk contents begin to make more sense as I sort through and categorize it all. Some of what I initially thought should be trashed will actually be useful if it’s stored in the right place. Like, I can move all the pet supplies downstairs to the drawer Fletch has designated and now I won’t be all, “I can’t find what we use to clip the cats’ nails, so I’ll have to pick up yet another one.”
    Net savings: ten dollars.
    Add that to the $17.31 I found in the drawer and I’ve already covered the cost of the box of color-coded file folders I bought.
    What’s funny is that the act of cleaning out my desk takes an hour, yet I’ve been dreading it for so damn many years. How much time have I wasted in fretting about organizing this instead of actually organizing? I kind of don’t want to know.
    I set up my desk so I can access everything I might need in the course of a workday. I place my pens, pencils, letter opener, and ruler in pretty mugs to the left of my monitor, and I keep a little box with scratchpaper, a nicely scented candle, and a paperweight on the other side. My desk is small, so I take some of my book covers and photos with friends and put them under the Plexiglas protector on top of my desk, so it’s still decorative, but not cluttered with actual frames.
    In my left-hand drawer, I store extra pens, cords, note cards, and cough drops, and I use the top right to house my ample supply of Post-its, binder clips, lip balm, a stapler, and measuring tape, because I’m dyslexic when it comes to guesstimating dimensions and ordering online. (Hell, I’m still crab-walking past certain sofas because four feet is wider than I imagined it would be.) The second drawer houses infrequently used items, like extra staples and lightbulbs. And the lowest drawer holds papers, which now live in alphabetically sorted folders, and not just one teeming stack.
    At no point am I euphoric while I work on this task, but the idea of opening a drawer and finding what I need is not without merit. Having my desk in order won’t change the world, but it will allow me to focus more on the task of writing, especially when I have a deadline in two months.
    Hey, it’s a start.
    I tackle my closet next, organizing footwear and maximizing the space by using those clear shoe boxes that Martha’s so hot for. In fact, Martha says that in terms of