And the chaos continues.
Over the weekend, my husband put together a new desk for the office - one that we had purchased several months ago, but hadn't built yet. We weren't having second thoughts, or merely procrastinating. We delayed the whole process because it was just that - a lengthy process that required first removing everything that was on the existing desk, then taking desk #1 apart in order to get desk #2 into our small office.
Sunday afternoon, we bit the bullet. Well, my husband did anyway. Tired of maneuvering around a box in our back room, he opened it up and got to work. I groaned. I knew it needed to be done, but I wasn't sure I was ready to face the domino effect that results when a new piece of furniture is moved into a little house that is already full to begin with.
I love the new desk. It's exactly what I wanted in the first place, and since it has a much smaller footprint, our tiny office looks (and feels) a little bigger. Our lovely new addition has triggered the predicted chain reaction, though. The long overdue office sort and purge now has to happen.
See, the office, minuscule as it is, is where all the homeless items that have any connection to an office (i.e., they are made of paper or can be purchased at Staples) come to die. Having moved personal files and belongings from a work office just five months ago, I have lots of odds and ends that still need sorting. I look forward to a fair amount of purging to result from that sorting, since time draining the value from many frivolous items, but many things that are now in piles are there for a reason: we have nowhere to go with them.
Right now, the things that were removed from desk #1 (including a monstrous printer that will take up half of my lovely new work space) are in the living room. By the end of this week, if not before, we will grow tired of this and my small space will reach its tipping point. And, my husband will decide that in the absence of a better solution, the printer must live on the desk.
And so it's time to practice what I preach - baby steps. Sunday's shredding session freed up some drawer space in the bookshelf unit as well as half a file drawer. Yesterday's sort and purge resulted in the clearing of a shelf. For now, I'm looking at the empty shelf, determining how best to use this gold mine of storage space. (It's too small for the file bin I'd hoped to put there), but as I continue in the sort and purge cycle, I'm sure I'll figure out exactly what to put there. I have a few nominees already, in fact.
In a strange way, I enjoy this whole process. What makes it disagreeable is the time it will take. Fortunately, I have my new desk with its wide-open spaces to motivate me - a shining example of the end result I desire for the rest of the room. A small part of me wonders how I will work when not surrounded by the detritus of projects past, but I think I'll learn to adjust. There's just one dilemma.
What do we do with the old desk?
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