I am in the process of carving out a little home office for myself and you would think I was about to get a free trip around the world, another baby, or a Lexus with a giant bow around it in my driveway, like you see in the commercials at Christmas. I am just that excited.
Except for childhood and a brief period in my 20s, I have never had a room of my own, much less a home office. A place where the mess is only my mess, not the mess of a child or husband who—despite being wonderful in nearly every other way—never remembers to put his dishes in the sink. Back in college I read Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own and, honestly, didn’t see what the big deal was about. Now that I work full time and have three children and a husband and a dog, there just seems to be mess everywhere I look. And I mean mess both in the literal and figurative sense. I have a messy, messy, messy life. And so I find myself having Woolfian fantasies of just walking out the door and never coming back. Do you have those fantasies? Can you have those fantasies and not end up drowning yourself in a river? I sure hope so.
So my life is a “mess,” but I don’t want to be a mess. (As in: “Oh, you know Kristin, she’s such a mess.”) And now I think I’ve found the ultimate anti-mess plan, which is to have my own office. The Path to Office looks like this:
Old house with no accessible attic = no place to store random crapola, which all goes in unoccupied bedroom
Old house needs to be rewired = suddenly there is a way to get into the attic
Attic needs to be insulated = attic gets a plywood floor
Plywood floor in attic = new place for random crapola
New place for random crapola = new empty room!
Now when I wake up in the night and can’t fall asleep again (see my post of last week, specifically the part about our babysitter change), I think about my new little office. I think about the wallpaper I chose, back when I was silly and naïve and thought there really was no big financial difference between painting a room and wallpapering it (uh…no). I think about putting my desk under the sunny double window and opening my laptop and instead of answering e-mails, just looking out the window. The door is closed on my otherwise messy life, and I have a moment to myself in a room where everything is in its place. And I will never drown myself in a river, at least not anytime soon.
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Oh, Kristin! I totally empathise. I read ‘A room of one’s own’ at school and never forgot its central premise. As the mum of 3 under 6, I ‘crave’ such a room. Instead, I have to make so with neatly labelled boxes of goodies which I store in my desk. I long to have a studio where I could set up an easel and paint to my heart’s content. Instead, I paint when all three children are out with their father on the living room table and then have to hurriedly clean up and pack away when they return home. Hardly relaxing! J x
Just a year ago I created such a room in an extra bedroom next to the Master bedroom. It is my dressing room/home office and I love it!! I used furniture I already had and added gently used items I picked up here and there. It is my personal sanctuary – heaven on earth! Certainly worth the effort from my personal experience.
I very much share your wish for my own space/office. I started to work from home last fall. We have a small office off our Family Room. The drawers in the desk are half full with my husband’s stuff. One of two bookcases as well. There is a box on the floor of his stuff which has been there since we moved into the house 4 1/2 years ago. My kids baby doll strollers (3 of them!), high chair, shopping cart and just about every blow up beach-type ball is stuffed in here with me. Sigh, I really need to clear this place out!!
*Oh sigh* I can’t wait…planning on doing this myself when I go home next week after 6 months overseas! Been dreaming of it the whole time! Mine is my sewing room though and will become my haven…big comfy chair to boot! It’s currently the storage room for random crapola too! Not for long!!!!
I couldn’t agree more! I work full time as an elementary school teacher, have 2 boys, a husband, 3 dogs and 3 cats – and very little sanity left! Last year, in a desperate attempt to sooth my fragile nerves and lift a minor bout of depression, my husband cleaned out the spare room completely, bought me a sewing desk and some shelves, and told me it was all mine! It isn’t anywhere near where I want it to be organization and decoration wise yet (another lack of time issue), but I have a space to sew, a scrapbooking table (like I have time to do any of that, but the thrill is in knowing that the space is available if I somehow manage to find a few spare minutes), and a little desk under the big sunny window. When the kids are chasing each other and the pets screaming through the house, it is so nice to escape into my little room and just sit with a glass of something (usually water, though wine might be nice once in a while) and look out the window while pretending to check things off of my to-do list. It makes all the difference in the world, which is good since I don’t have any rivers nearby here in Colorado.