I should've tackled this project ages ago. Working in an environment with more creature comforts and fewer distractions has been amazing. Case in point: this week we had our driveway redone and while the concrete crew worked their magic (and created a fair amount of noise and dust), I still accomplished my writing goal of 7,000 words. I literally sat a hundred feet from the trucks and activity and kept my focus. (And now we can move between our driveway and garage without navigating a 3-inch gap!) Here's how things went down last month:
Step one. I spent two days engaged in ruthless decluttering. Hauling out two chairs was easy. Cleaning the corner piles and culling the books, magazines, photographs, and random papers was tedious. I discovered my old laptop (properly sent to electronic recycling) and old drafts of published books (dropped in our recyling bin). With the corners cleared and floor space reclaimed, I began
Step two. I dragged my grandparents' hutch diagonally across the room and tucked it beside the French doors. The hutch is exactly one inch too wide for all the spots I'd like to put it (and trust me, I walked all over my house with a tape measure) and I'm unwilling to put their first piece of nice furniture (purchased from Ethan Allen after WWII after they moved into their house on Harriman Street) into storage. A pair of oversized books about the art in Florence protects the door from hitting the hutch. As you can see, I can't fully open one of the French doors now, but I needed to slide my desk over to its former location. The hutch is heavy (it's made from old-growth trees) even when empty, and moving it gave me an opportunity to go through the stationery and other junk I store in it. I split up the chair and table from their corner to make space for the hutch.
Step three. I applied myself to dusting, vaccuming, and rehanging the pictures on the walls. Nothing humbles my housekeeping skills like moving furniture. That's when I discover a legion of dust bunnies and cat hair and insect corpses (and start sneezing). After wiping down the empty walls, I installed my new bulletin board above my desk and now important notes (character lists, maps of locations, plot points) and my beloved wooden Little Women ornaments by Chris Schweizer (thanks, Kara!) have a place to hang. Everything I regularly reference sits at eye level while I work, saving me the annoying hassle of looking back through my Word doc and digging through papers stacked on my desk. My desk is much cleaner, too, without all these papers scattered across it. I found felt squares for building a bulletin board online. Adhesive backing sticks them to any surface so you can customize your board (or 2 or 3 boards) without fuss. The board cost $35 plus tax and I snagged a cheap box of thumbtacks at Target for $3.
Step four. I removed the two wingback chairs and kept my overstuffed comfy chair for reading. Years ago I bought a sharp-looking upholstered dining chair to use with my desk, but it wasn't comfortable for working long hours. Since Mr. G is living off-campus in a house this year, I had to sort out his furniture situation, which involved him needing a long table (he didn't want a desk, my kid has a weird bias against using drawers) and a rolling desk chair. Anyone sensible refuses to buy a college kid brand new furniture, so I drove over to Habitat Restore where they had dozens of rolling desk chairs for sale. I tested out several (there's a good reason some get priced at $1 and others at $15) and after ten minutes of rolling around the linoleum floor (and falling over once when a $1 chair turned out to be totally broken), I selected two, one for each of us. (I also found a long, narrow table for Mr. G's desk and it fit the space in his new room perfectly.) Grand total: $45 + tax.
Step five (still in progress). As you can see, I have too many books and I've even begun using my public library again on a regular basis! As a former library page, I have my collection arranged using a hybrid of Dewey Decimal and thematic cataloging. Because I prefer all books of a type together on the same shelf, I need to move entire shelves of books out of their spots to make room for sections that have grown too big for their designated space. My general fiction collection is GINORMOUS, and even creating a separate section for mysteries (giving considerable space when I moved books by Horowitz, Griffiths, Montlclair and Johnstone) didn't allow me to shelve newly acquired titles. Then I created a Christmas section and split out the classics, but I'm still not happy with how some shelves are overflowing and others have room. I've got boxes of books to donate, and I'm only halfway done going through my shelves to pull, sort, and rearrange. What I've accomplished is a huge improvement (believe it or not). When the weather gets colder, I'll finish this part of the room and unload the unwanted books somewhere.
I'm SO happy to have elbow room as I work! It feels positively invigorating to step into a cleaned-up room and sit down at a desk where I can find everything I need without a struggle. And my back is loving how the new chair supports it! In all, I spent 3 days and less than $60 getting my workspace in working order. Anyone ever sell to Half-Price Books? Tell me in the comments if that's a good idea...maybe there's a chance I could break even!
Coming to this blog soon: the tale of my first solo road trip to the Smokey Mountains!
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