In my office, I have a desk.

It is a fine desk. Beautiful, large, and kind of a dark cherry red wood-that-might-not-actually-be-wood. A desk that I sort of liberated from its sad prior existence of languishing in the lobby, abandoned by former staff. In its stead, I left a ramshackle little desk that I bought for five bucks or so at a surplus store years ago. Now that desk is living a sad existence as well, but I try not to look at it so much, because I don’t need the guilt.

In my desk, there is a massive amount of clutter.

I cannot get at the clutter. I locked myself out of it. How sad is that, and in some ways, how convenient?

It was about a month ago. We had just moved to a new location, and I had just set up my office space. I was kinda-sorta-not really in a rush, perhaps a little temporarily lazy, and up-ended a box (or two) full of stuff into its drawers, fully intending to eventually sort through the clutter to create some kind of order. I think, anyway. That I dumped the contents of the box into the drawers in full view of one of my co-workers, a guy that lives to crack admittedly hilarious jokes, probably wasn’t the best idea. Especially since he regaled the story of me dumping the aforementioned boxes into the drawers during a recent staff development training on minimalism at work. Hmm. I didn’t think that one through.

Anyway, it’s all locked in. The keys are locked inside, I think.

I spent the first 10 minutes at the office this morning trying to implement a little minimalism in my office space, and I did a decent job, but it sure would help if I could put some of that in the desk.

If only I could get it open.

I may get a locksmith to get into this little Fort Knox, with its treasures of paper clips and Post-Its and scads of pens and pencils and all manner of office flotsam and jetsam.

But then I’d have to deal with that clutter. What a dilemma.