This past weekend, after weeks and weeks of threatening, I finally told my oldest that it was time to get his desk organized. I started with the idea of folders.

“You don’t have to throw anything out,” I told him. “But you do have to be able to find things. Use the folders. Label them.”

He clearly wasn’t buying what I was selling, so I tried again. “Look. Some of these papers are stories, right? So make a file called ‘stories’ and put them all in it. That way, when you want to look at one of your stories, you can find it.”

“Okay,” he said. “Give me a folder.”

I handed him one, and he shoved all the papers from his desk into it.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Label this one ‘stuff from my desk’,” he said, handing it to me.