make my office area orderly & inviting

Well, the impetus provided by the big music-poetry party was NOT sufficient to allow me to check this goal off. But I made some significant inroads in recent days—the office area is looking better than it has for months. I have taken out several more bags of papers for recycling, & I got an organizer that will help me keep receipts tidy.

I’m looking forward to getting things further stashed away or recycled so that the move into the back room can happen. It will feel so good.

to find time to do this—life has been SO busy. But yesterday I took three bags of paper out to the recycling bin. As we say in Spanish, algo es algo (something is something).

I am committed to this though, & my husband & I have decided that I am going to move my office to the little back room. Which makes me very happy & helps me to stay motivated.

Somehow my time away has cleared my head & made me determined to accomplish this.

Goal: have my office cleaned up & spiffy by September 6, the day of our music-poetry garden party.

Plan: work on it doggedly on every other weeknight (alternating with freelance editing).

I’m going to give myself some kind of nice reward when it’s done, probably some new clothes!

But I’m not going to beat myself up. Neatness in my home office is always hard for me. Not so at work; the difference is that there I’m handling a limited number of projects, receive very little mail, & have adequate filing & shelf space for everything, whereas at home my office is a catchall & my space is quite inadequate. Plus I have to devote way too much time to freelance work for financial survival; there’s precious little time for organizing stuff.

I’m going to keep this on my list & see what solutions I can find as time goes by.

By the way, I looked at my past challenges & 43T tells me that I failed ALL of them! That’s not true. 43Things, don’t make me look like such a failure! :-)

but then papers pile up again. However, the 43Things challenge deadline is motivating me to think about this. I really do want to get it done by the end of April—what a great sign of spring that would be!

I have to set aside some specific blocks of time to work on it.

We were having a party, & the never-ending rain made it impossible to do another backyard picnic as we’d planned. In the process of cleaning up the house I got some papers sorted, & the shameful pile on the floor is now no more. That’s a relief.

There’s a lot left to do still . . . step by step.

My stepdaughter has moved out on her own, & I have started to think about switching my office to the little room she lived in. The futon she slept on is attractive & comfortable as a sofa, & its colors would go perfectly in the living room. It would be wonderful to open up the open “sun porch”/bay & make it part of the living room. More space for people to sit at parties! (We love having people over.) We could get a simple folding screen to give this area some privacy when we have an overnight guest. We could add some nice houseplants.

I love our little guestroom – it’s spring green & looks out on the backyard. I could get inspired there, & moving my office there would force me to get my office mess cleaned up. I would have more wall space (the bay’s walls are mostly windows) so could add shelves to help with organizing.

There are some questions about what would fit where, so we have to do some measuring before we decide for sure. Would the bulky armoire fit in the living room bay & not look too ugly there? (Could it be camouflaged acceptably with cloth draped over the sides & plants on top?) Or should we leave it in the back room & get something less obtrusive for guests to hang clothes in? The armoire could be adapted for nonclothes storage. But then what would we do with my computer desk?

My husband thinks the guestroom (which faces south & has no radiator or AC unit) might be too hot for me in summer & too cold in winter. I am thinking it might be fine with (1) the really good window fan we use there in summer & (2) wearing layers in the winter plus running the little space heater when it gets really really cold.

An alternative would be to get a very minimal wheeled computer table that I could take back & forth between there & the living room bay as needed.

Lots to think about!

getting some needed filing/sorting done. My office area (a large bay off the living room, at the very front of our home) doesn’t have enough storage containers/furniture, & it’s in constant disarray.

I don’t like to live & work in a mess. But I need to give myself lots of time to get it the way I want it.