Just before Christmas I got a new desk. Part Christmas present from my parents and part “I need a new desk because I’m running out of storage space and it’s driving me crazy!” So. New desk.
I love it. Right now it’s my favourite piece of furniture in our home. The desk is a bit shorter than my old one, but it’s deeper, so there’s plenty of room for the monitor, keyboard and all the other bits.
If you click on the two images above, I’ve added some notes to them over on Flickr…
But the star of the show is the shelving unit. I use it for storage, and boy-oh-boy, there’s room for so much stuff! Everything that used to live under my old desk is now neatly put away in the shelves below ‘desk level’ + a load of other stuff from elsewhere. It’s like magic, I tellz ya!
The shelves above desk level are used for pretty storage and little bits of knick-knack. Which is nice! It’s nice to be able to look at something pretty when you’re working. The shelving unit also acts like a room divider, so it feels a little bit like I’m in a separate room (my desk is in the living room) and it’s easier to ignore the telly!
And the side of the unit has been put to use as a blackboard to-do list! It’s self-adhesive blackboard foil/paper which I’ve stuck onto sheets of paper and then attached to the unit with some pretty masking tape. One day I hope to have a whole blackboard wall, but for now this will do! :-)
In a way it’s crazy that a desk makes such a difference, but on the other hand it makes absolutely perfect sense. I’m not the tidiest person, mainly because I’ve usually got more than one project in the works at the same time, so I can tolerate some mess. But the kind of mess that happens because things simply don’t have a home, that’s not so good.
The no-home mess is bad because since the stuff has no home, it just piles up in random places where it definitely doesn’t belong, but where are you supposed to put it when it has no home? When things have no home, it can’t be tidied away and so it just gets worse.
So the new desk is making a big difference. Things have homes and can be put away (most of the time!), making it easier to focus on what I’m supposed to be working on instead of worrying about where I’m going to put stuff.
Who knew that a piece of furniture could make such a difference? Have you experienced this too?