End of a paper trail.

Byline: Diane Dietz The Register-Guard

In every business and government office in the land dwells at least one employee who works under the daily threat of being crushed by the weight of his or her own accumulated paper.

Consider Springfield Economic Development Manager John Tamulonis. You'd be hard-pressed to find an unencumbered surface in his City Hall office.

Piles march across the top of his desk. Criss-crossed stacks hopscotch along the floor. Documents jam eight filing cabinets and fill 30 boxes.

The multiplying reams were so alarming to co-workers that once, when he was leaving the office for a few days, they asked if they could throw out duplicates, Tamulonis said. Another time, the room was so chaotic that City Manager Mike Kelly ordered Tamulonis to curtain his office to screen it from view.

Every Friday, Tamulonis tries to clear enough space to lay two sheets of paper side by side on the front of his desk. Every six months, he wheels out three cardboard drums of paper.

Still, the tsunami gathers.

"If I started with a pencil and one piece of paper," he said, "within six months I'd be back to where I am right now. It's just the way it works."

People in the same boat will have a chance on Saturday to get rid of their waste paper and at the same time help a charitable cause. Weyerhaeuser Co. is holding a shred-a-thon at its Glenwood recycling facility, with fee proceeds going to BRING Recycling.

It's not clear whether paper accumulators come by their messy inclinations by nature or nurture. But it's a behavior that emerges early.

Tamulonis collected cards as a boy - baseball cards, football cards, quirky fact cards, even Elvis Presley cards.

He recalls this scene from his youth:

His bedroom was a jumble of Tinker Toys, Legos, dismantled clocks, neon signs - when suddenly he'd demand: "Who's been in my room?"

"How do you know I was in your room?" his mother would reply.

"I'd say, `This has been moved,' ' and the young Tamulonis would point out a single object that had been moved a quarter turn.

Paper-accumulating behavior tends to persist across venues as well as time.

Eugene resident Don Bishoff had a legendarily messy desk when he was a columnist at The Register-Guard. Upon excavation, he found petrified fruit as well as bits of office party cake with which co-workers amused themselves by hiding over the years. A local TV station did a feature story on Bishoff and his desk.

Today, Bishoff has moved his mess to the Capitol in Salem, where he is a legislative aide to state Sen. Bill Morrisette, D-Springfield. Between sessions, he fills two desks at home.

"My wife keeps reading magazine articles about how to cure the pack-rat syndrome," Bishoff said. "She shoves them at me, and I put them on my desk with every good intention of reading them. I'm sure there's several of those in here right now."

Occasionally, well-meaning co-workers will attempt an intervention with their messy colleague. They hope to improve their friends' efficiency, their promotability, their comfort - and ease their own angst about the clutter.

But paper accumulators often are disoriented by cleanliness. They describe a sense of suddenly not being able to find a thing.

"Spacially, your mind feels a little funny," said Steve Gordon, a master paper accumulator - and onetime senior planner - at the Lane Council of Governments office in downtown Eugene. His store of LCOG paperwork included many drafts of the metro area transporation plan and of the west Eugene wetlands plan.

It used to be that a messy desk was considered evidence of psychological or moral malfunction. Organizational experts issued advice such as "touch a paper no more than once." But researchers began to wonder why desks in business and industry continued to be messy when computers offered ever-more sophisticated ways to organize and store information.

They figured out that piling and arranging paper is actually an integral part of thinking. It's how workers process disparate ideas until categories and connections become clear.

Some agencies find novel ways of dealing with the problem. Take the case of Steve Auferoth, director of employee health and fitness, who was in the running for messiest desk of any city of Eugene employee.

Until about six months ago, he had a jam-packed office in the risk manager's section on the main floor of City Hall. Papers piled two feet high on the desk. Cardboard boxes crowded under the tables. Nutrition newsletters and health letters vied for any available inch.

Then, the Fire Department vacated a basement of City Hall, and the space planners decided that would be a good place for Auferoth.

"My supervisor told me `no more stacks,' '' he said.

Downstairs, he could really get organized. He had eight large wooden fire crew lockers where he could stow his boxes and stacks. He had shelves for his journals.

"Under the tables are all wide open," he said triumphantly.

But now he confesses to being a bit lonely in his new digs. "It's so quiet down here. Nobody walks by your office and says, `Hi.' It's a win, half-win kind of thing," he said.

TAMING YOUR PAPER TIGER 

Barbara Hemphill, author of a series of "Taming the Paper Tiger" books, offers this advice for paper accumulators:

Why keep it? People tend to keep personal papers such as utility bills and credit card statements far longer than necessary. Accountants say three years is long enough. The statute of limitations is up in seven.

Consider: If I threw this away and I was wrong, what's the worst possible outcome? Is it a price I'm willing to pay?

Bottom line: If you don't know you have it, or you can't find it, it's of no value to you.

Learn more: at www.productiveenvironment.com

SHREDDING FOR A CAUSE

A "shred-a-thon" will benefit BRING Recycling's new home:

When: 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday

Where: Weyerhaeuser Recycling, 3425 E. 17th Ave., Glenwood

Cost: 8 cents a pound with a minimum of $2.50