With only a week of leave left I thought I should get stuck in to cleaning up my study so that it is spic and span by the time I go back to work. I made a start today but didn’t progress too far before I was interrupted by the need to give my son a lift to work and go and get some groceries. But I will continue, inspired by André’s nice tidy workspace.
I have my eye on a table and office chair, both used but in good shape, at a used office furniture place up the road and went there on Christmas Eve to buy them only to find they had already closed until 5 January. The curse of the procrastinator; I suppose I’ll just have to go back then.
I have a nice big old office desk but it only just has the width for my computer (“No lady, that big box is not the hard drive”), 22" wide-screen monitor, scanner and printer, leaving me to balance my graphics tablet on top of the scanner when neither are in use. I would like to have my equipment spread out a bit more so I want to use the table to create an extension of my desktop so I can move the printer a bit further away. The chair I want has slightly soiled upholstery but seems mechanically sound and at just R250 is a bargain. The one I’m sitting on right now is ten years old and the seat foam has collapsed leaving me to sit on a pillow. The upholstery was also shredded by an exuberant cat we used to have. I plan to buy a piece of foam and some fabric off-cuts and reupholster it for my wife as she has a dining room chair at her desk right now.
craniac's place 
mmmm … Andre’s workspace looks amazingly neat (but he has no ‘stuff’….) My workspace looks much like yours (did), with everything making do and nothing really dedicated for what it was intended to be. I have a trestle table (with a bar stool ‘cos the bokkies are rather high…) in the ‘guest room’ which houses photographic books, laptop, scanner and cd player – mostly for making av’s – when a guest comes they just have to live with it …. My workroom has a desk (for my work), two bookshelves, a sewing unit/rolltop thingey, a fax machine, another scanner (Michele’s), a printer, a kist and two rollaround chairs – I kid you not! No space to swing my cat … I know what it feels like when you think you need to tidy the place up! Good luck!
Did I mention that my workroom also houses my pc, harddrive, keyboard, shredder and plug connections which would do a Christmas tree proud?!
I’m busy with it at the moment. I am being ruthless with what I keep but the problem is persuading Mela to part with stuff. She is a bit of a hoarder and has files full of recipes and patterns that she has never used and will likely never use, but she likes to hang on to them just in case.
The biggest boon to uncluttering would be for one or both of our large sons to move out so we can reclaim the space they occupy. 🙂
André just moved from Pretoria back to the Cape so he probably went through an uncluttering exercise already.
I know exactly how Mela feels! So far, I have managed to give away all my decoupage paraphenalia, books to the ‘Pets as Therapy’ people for their stall, clothes to the folk in Hout Bay who lost their houses … I’ll never be a knitter so all the stuff I inherited from my mom I will be giving to a friend (any grandchildren I might get will have to do with Woollies), but I have recently revived an interest in baking, so perhaps I’ll keep that stuff. Recipes are the pits – little bits of paper floating between leaves of recipes books … I have enough books to keep me going till I die, so out with the bits of paper….the Internet is great for finding a recipe you don’t have. tralah
Haha!
Yup, Nettie, quite right, I have no ‘stuff’. I’ve found the path to true freedom by ditching or giving it away :))
And Steve, you’re right too. When I moved down, I had intended to rent a Ventertjie, but couldn’t locate one. So, I simply rationalised again, and more, until everything fit into the Audi. Amazingly, I miss nothing.
And my desk *is* more tidy … :)))