(Continued from Part 2 here)
So what do you do when clutter and disarray drives you up the wall? You go up the wall! That was my final solution for the office room.
The office room was not working in so many ways when I started. It was dark and had boring white walls. And the desk! Oh the desk!! The desk proved to be such a clutter magnet that no one could ever work on it. Or if you did, you first had to shove a whole lot of junk out of the way first. This of course meant lost papers, bills, what not. The office room had taken a life of it's own. It was as if the walls were closing in on us and squeezing us out. It was time to take back the room. The first two problems were taken care of in Part One and Part Two of this makeover.
The next job is to kill the clutter. Because nothing kills my mojo more than clutter! And yet, right now, my entire house is a construction zone. But, this kind of clutter is good clutter. It's the storm before the calm. The darkest hour before dawn.
So, how to kill clutter? By providing more room for things that need to be stored and keeping it mostly hidden from view and yet easy to access when needed. The first thing that had to be tamed was the clutter magnet -- desk. I decided that this room will be where most of my work work as well as my creative work happens. So the desk was needed in its role as, you know, a desk. So I sat me down, cross-legged, on a single contemporary chair that I moved in from my family room and said to myself, "design a room around this!" (much like in the commercial for Kohler bathroom fixtures!)
The first draft of the plan looked like this for the walls nearest my chair.
Wow I am so grown up, I even plan before I buy! Note all the detailed measurements and such like in the diagram. I had it planned to the 't' including a spot for my water bottle which I am always carrying around as well as making sure that everything is above Dufus's nose-prodding-height.
The idea was to be able to sit at that spot and reach for the phone if necessary, put away my laptop (safely) in a hurry if one of the critters needed immediate attention, reach for all the things I might need while working from shelf hanging on the wall (thereby making the room feel more roomy) and dedicating a wall mounted shelf entirely to the ugly, but essential electronics. I even decided to go for a wall mounted, fold away desk for times when the need for a desk overwhelms me. I followed the plans almost exactly, except for some minor modifications. IKEA was out of their Norbo wall mounted desk, so there is no desk and yet it functions.
Here it is in pictures
You can see it's very close to the original plan. I nixed the box and the second LACK shelf because I decided against drilling holes through the LACK for the wires that will exit the box. The job of the second LACK shelf is being taken over by the tree stump table. Hanging that LACK shelf was quite the comedy of errors. All we had to do was find the wall studs and screw the hanging mechanism into these. Straight forward right? Right. These sticky tapes were the result of our stud finding mission! Agreed my house is old. Agreed it is non-standard in several aspects. But I don't think even my house is capable of having wall studs placed at such random intervals.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
So what do you do when clutter and disarray drives you up the wall? You go up the wall! That was my final solution for the office room.
The office room was not working in so many ways when I started. It was dark and had boring white walls. And the desk! Oh the desk!! The desk proved to be such a clutter magnet that no one could ever work on it. Or if you did, you first had to shove a whole lot of junk out of the way first. This of course meant lost papers, bills, what not. The office room had taken a life of it's own. It was as if the walls were closing in on us and squeezing us out. It was time to take back the room. The first two problems were taken care of in Part One and Part Two of this makeover.
The next job is to kill the clutter. Because nothing kills my mojo more than clutter! And yet, right now, my entire house is a construction zone. But, this kind of clutter is good clutter. It's the storm before the calm. The darkest hour before dawn.
So, how to kill clutter? By providing more room for things that need to be stored and keeping it mostly hidden from view and yet easy to access when needed. The first thing that had to be tamed was the clutter magnet -- desk. I decided that this room will be where most of my work work as well as my creative work happens. So the desk was needed in its role as, you know, a desk. So I sat me down, cross-legged, on a single contemporary chair that I moved in from my family room and said to myself, "design a room around this!" (much like in the commercial for Kohler bathroom fixtures!)
The first draft of the plan looked like this for the walls nearest my chair.
Wow I am so grown up, I even plan before I buy! Note all the detailed measurements and such like in the diagram. I had it planned to the 't' including a spot for my water bottle which I am always carrying around as well as making sure that everything is above Dufus's nose-prodding-height.
The idea was to be able to sit at that spot and reach for the phone if necessary, put away my laptop (safely) in a hurry if one of the critters needed immediate attention, reach for all the things I might need while working from shelf hanging on the wall (thereby making the room feel more roomy) and dedicating a wall mounted shelf entirely to the ugly, but essential electronics. I even decided to go for a wall mounted, fold away desk for times when the need for a desk overwhelms me. I followed the plans almost exactly, except for some minor modifications. IKEA was out of their Norbo wall mounted desk, so there is no desk and yet it functions.
Here it is in pictures
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| This is what I see when I sit and write this on this chair. The picture will move to the left a little as soon as I can find me another nail! And yes, it is a tree stump that is holding my water bottle. It is as yet unfinished. But will be soon and that will be another post. |
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| The LACK shelf that holds all the electronic stuff. Ignore the painters tapes on the wall. They are hanging there to be used for another project. This view also shows my accent wall in relation to everything else. The desk will eventually move from here. The painting is just waiting to go to its final place. Erm and that pile you see stacked in the yard? That's the remainder of the cinder blocks still waiting for their turn to become a wonderful garden! |
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| Oh and what's that lovely little African box doing here? It was my erstwhile garlic holder |
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| But now... this is what it holds. The holes in the back (part of the carving) provided natural inlet s for all the wiring) |
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
2 comments:
Zen of Decluttering ?
I know I need your magic in my crazy house : no interior design stylist can keep in mind prodding Dog noses or devise an African box electronic holder:!!
Maha Impressed .
More than happy to be of service !
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