Home office hell
My home office is in our 3rd bedroom along with Noah’s desk and art supplies, a dog cage that’s three times the size that Peanut needs (we were told she would get 3 times as big as she has), and Brett’s dresser. And an enormous pile of Brett’s clothes that may be clean or may be dirty; one never knows. Work related things include a large computer desk, two office chairs (one for Noah to spin around on while he chats with me), a bookshelf with my editing and pregnancy books, a file cabinet and a trash can.
My desk is covered with stuff. There’s the phone and my rolodex and my calendar and the printer and the CD burner and the CDs. There is also various projects belongint to Noah, books I’m reading while waiting for web pages to load (dial up connection), piles of papers to be sorted and sundry items (coffee cups, hand sanitzer, broken earphones) that have found their way here and forgotten to go home again.
My problem is that the way I do things is visual. When I look at a page that needs to be edited, I see it as colored blocks. The content has color and space to me and when I edit, even though I’m reading it abstractly, I “see” it in my head. This is the same way I plan stories. When someone is explaining something to me, it helps me to have lists and maps and flowcharts. I take notes that go all over the page with arrows and asides and things. I like to print things out and draw all over them.
If I had my way, I would have a giant bulletin board in my office where I could start organizing notes to stories. I would put up the names of contact people and the lists of things to do to get the info that I need. I would have another board for story ideas. I always have several notebooks going and so I would have room for all of them on and files for everything. I’m so random that it’s easiest for me if I can have several ideas literally on the table at once.
See, the older I get (and I’m now the wise old age of 33), the more I realize that I’m probably not going to change that much so I may as well learn to live with how I am. That means that I’ll always have a cluttered workspace. That means that I need to figure out how to work with clutter, which is do-able. Less do-able is the fact that I have a hard time sharing space because each insignificant looking pile of papers is there for a reason and if anyone moves them or puts his newspaper on top of them or cleans them up in the loving but mistaken notion that he’s helping, I’m screwed.
We’re going to need this room to have at least the possibility of housing a baby. The truth is that the baby will be with us for, well, forever if Noah is any indication and so won’t really need a room until they’re of an age to actually have stuff that they want to put somplace. For Noah that was three. We’re planning on downsizing Peanut’s cage and maybe moving Brett’s dresser out so that we can set up a crib and keep the social workers happy but still keep this as a home office.
The problem is that my workload appears to be increasing and so, I believe, will my carefully engineered mess. Not to mention the possibility that I’ll need to expand my office equipment (a fax machine, for example). We’re brainstorming ways to deal with it.
We love our house and have no plans to move soon but when we do, we’ll definitely be looking for a place where I can have a Room of My Own. I salivate at the thought of it. How lovely! But even with a best case scenario plan, that’s two years away.
Meanwhile, I periodically reorganize my apparent chaos and try to be patient when people who shall remain nameless cover my notes with Pokemon maps and rearrange the keyboard to suit a taller person.
HA! Sounds like my office. Althou, I’m a bitch and the hubby has almost no space in it. And it’ll stay that way since I now have to share my room with the baby. Thankfully babies have no need for computers…yet!