Messy Room: Top Surfaces Could Not Be Cleared Yet

I soon realized that I wouldn't be able to clear off the top surfaces of my dresser and desk given the current lack of floor space and shelf space.

Hence, I decided to change my tactics.  I had been placing white plastic bags of paperwork in the cabinet in my desk.  I've attempted to sort scattered papers before, but I'd just put them in bags by whether I could recycle them, needed to keep them, needed to shred them, or could just throw them away.  At least, I'm hoping that the bags I pulled out of my desk were sorted before, so it'll be less work trying to sort them.  Sadly, I'm guessing that I'll have to re-sort everything.

So I pulled the bags out of the desk cabinet and piled them up on the floor in front of my dresser.  Then, I cleaned the inside of the desk cabinet, since it was dusty.  I removed the dowels holding the one shelf in the cabinet and moved them to the lowest available dowel holes.  Then, I moved the shelf down to a lower position to increase the amount of shelving I had.

I tried to sort paperwork earlier and didn't have the floor space to do it efficiently.  Hence, I picked up the trash I could and moved things around to optimize the amount of central floor space in the room.  Therefore, I created a circle of piles that I can systematically deal with more efficiently.

The state of my room was rather dire when this semester finished.  I keep finding myself distracted away from cleaning my room and it's partly because the mess intimidates me a bit.  Sometimes a big mess, even with minor components, can seem impossible to mitigate efficiently due to its magnitude (this fact is the reason I do not envy our President's job).  But if we break up the problem into smaller parts and focus on one goal at a time, it can be less intimidating and much more fulfilling.