Lori Borgman: 11 reasons to not clean my desk drawer

My desk drawer is a mess. It's always a mess. Even after I tidy it up, it reverts to a mess as soon as I close the drawer.

I think it's because I do things quickly. I move fast and mess things up fast. But even if I slowed down, it would still be a mess, just a mess on slow bake.

My desk is considered communal property in that it sits in the family room, which means it is a grandkid magnet. You try saying no to 11 sets of big pleading eyes. All they want to do is play office, school, stage a musical or set up a bank. (Their lending fees are criminal!)

The old rolltop desk has two side trays that pull out, a main desk drawer with a maze of small dividers, eight pigeon holes and six tiny drawers beneath the two cubbies holding letter-size paper.

Wedged in the corner of the desk is an acrylic cube stuffed full of comics that the husband has clipped from newspapers. They are like potato chips. You can't laugh at just one.

The desk is furnished with a 3-hole punch, colorful rubber bands in an old Ball jar, scissors, assorted Post-its, tape (regular and double-sided) and numerous pens, some of which actually work. There's also an X-Acto knife, glue sticks and a monogrammed letter opener that was a gift from our son's eighth-grade language arts teacher for talking to her class. I should have been the one gifting her.

The desk is also home to one of those big red Staples buttons. You push the red button and it says, "That was easy!" We got it for our daughter to punch after she had open heart surgery on her 25th birthday. These days we save it for other momentous occasions like losing a tooth, finishing every book in the Hardy Boys series, or smacking a Wiffle ball into the neighbor's yard.

Sometimes I'm tempted to say, "The desk is off limits; you're messing with Grandma's office."

I would if I could, but I can't.

I remember going to my dad's office as a kid, sitting in his big desk chair on wheels, pulling open the middle desk drawer, and gasping in wonder. Ballpoint pens galore. Paper clips. Yellow No. 2 pencils-with erasers even! He had an electric pencil sharpener and his very own stapler! So this was the privileged life of grown-ups.

The most jaw-dropping wonder was the adding machine. The adding machine made a racket as you punched in numbers. The paper chugged and chugged, then the contraption fell silent with a final tally. The machine was right. Every. Single. Time. Tell me again-why did I have to go to school?

Somedays I open the middle drawer of my desk and flash back to prowling in my dad's desk drawer. Maybe one day these kids will have memories of ransacking Grandma's desk. I'll bet two glue sticks, a pair of safety scissors and a jumbo blue crayon on it.

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This story was originally published April 21, 2026 at 5:10 AM.