After all that talk about how I was going to declutter and get rid of my excess stuff while I was off in August, I barely made a dent. If there’s no deadline I can procrastinate with the best. So I procrastinated about decluttering my home office and now it’s biting me in the ass, because my home office is now going to be my work office for good – at least as long as the job lasts.
The place where I work that doesn’t pay me has determined that the group I work in will be classified as hybrid workers, which in this case means two days a week in the office. They’ve already sent a second monitor and wireless keyboard and mouse for my home office, and the docking station for my laptop has shipped and should be here this week, so that’s all fine. But that leaves me with zero desk space for my own computer and monitor and Stuff.
I only have room for one desk at the moment, and it’s about to be sacrificed for the day job. This isn’t going to work for me long term, and that has finally motivated me to action.
I originally thought I’d replace my current desk, bought when this whole work from home thing started, with a big corner desk where I could put the work stuff on one side and my own computer on the other. Space for the desk isn’t an issue once the damn futon is out. But after thinking about it, I decided I’ll sort of make my own version of a corner desk: I’ll buy another desk just like the one I have now, but in the 63 inch size, which will better accommodate the two monitors, laptop, docking station, etc. My current desk will be on the other wall with my wee MacBook, the hub, and the other monitor.
For the past year and a half I’ve been doing a computer swap daily. My work laptop is “special” and can’t be used for normal internet as it connects only through the company VPN, so after 5 I unplug it and put it on a shelf and plug in my Mac. (There’s a little more to it than that, but I’ll oversimplify because this is already boring.) So, while it may seem crazy to have a “work desk” and a personal desk in the same room, it will work for me.
But for now I’ll have to figure out a temporary workaround, because first there must be a massive Purging of the Shit.
A family member in NC asked me if I had any old family photos I could share, they were having a conversation trying to figure out who my NC grandkids look like.
I discovered that I don’t have very many old photos scanned, because day job, and while I was looking I came across evidence of when I’d acquired some things I have been stubbornly holding onto because “I spent good money on that.” Yes, yes I did – in 2007 or 8 or whenever! Let it go already, Elsa!
Goodwill doesn’t need a lot of this old shit.
So now I’m being ruthless. While throwing away books hurts my heart and feels like a crime, the reality is that the real estate books taking up shelf space are a decade out of date – I have a 31st edition of a text that is now up to its 44th edition. My mission for the next few weeks is to make the neighbors wonder if I’m moving out when they see the piles of crap at the curb on trash day.
So, I put the futon on the neighborhood FB page (I know, I know, but used very cautiously, FB is useful.) Within ten minutes I had a taker. A very nice couple who lives about two blocks away came over, disassembled it (no easy task) and took it away. She saw my WEBS catalog and was happy to meet another fiber person! She knits, crochets, spins and weaves. We are everywhere.
The cat is bereft – she keeps looking at the empty space where the six foot cat bed used to be. I’ll make it up to her with a nice cat bed after the second desk arrives and I get this entire space rearranged. The most daunting task – re-homing that futon – is done!!
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