Nesting

We have, from time to time over the past 3 years, tried to carve out some office space for me in our house – but it turns out I’m very particular. I don’t like to be too far away from what I like to call “the action” (sounds exciting, huh?), I like to have a lot of light, a bit of space to stretch out – also my cats need to be able to come and go freely. They’re banished from Tom’s office downstairs because one of them (THE WHITE ONE) likes to chew on cords, so the other one (the good one) is locked out by association. But I’m just someone who feels like every space benefits from having an animal in it, it makes me feel better for some reason that I won’t even try to explain. The cord chewer has all but annihilated the charger for my Blackberry but I still let him hang around – and miraculously, the charger still works. It must be operating on sheer willpower at this point.

We do have a sunroom in this house, though. It’s sort of an ugly little thing, formerly a 3 season porch that the previous owner had enclosed. It has giant windows on three walls, its own heat and ceiling fan – up until now we’ve been using it as a “mudroom” I guess you could call it. It’s off our kitchen so it’s the dumping grounds for coats, shoes, backpacks and other assorted nonsense. It dawned on me last week that the sunroom could be the answer to my office problems. It’s just a short trip through the kitchen to get to me. The reason I’d never considered it was because we never put blinds up on the windows. We weren’t really using the room for much, it’s off the back of our house, so we never felt the need. We do have neighbors on two sides, though – so on Friday I hung more linear feet of wood blinds than I care to think about.

I also have a 180 degree view of the backyard, separate heat for the winter – and also, the most important thing, a TON of outlets. I don’t know what she had planned for this room when she had it all enclosed, but there are outlets everywhere. The room itself is only about 6′ x 10′ but it has 6 outlets in it and it’s on a separate breaker from the rest of the house.

I set up an old desk out here over the weekend and took the set-up for a test drive – and wouldn’t you know that I managed to get a ton of work done? I haven’t known productivity like this for quite some time. Tom has been telling me for years that if I just sat at a desk I’d be far more focused. I don’t have attention deficit disorder or anything, I’m just really easily amused by ridiculous things. There’s no doctor that can cure that disease, folks.

Oh, another fun perk of the sunroom office? Setting up a sprinkler on a hot Saturday afternoon and being able to watch my crazy 9 year old run through it like he was a toddler again. All while getting a few papers made for an upcoming kit.

So now that I’ve decided that I adore this space, we’re going to take a trip up to ye ol’ IKEA to pick up a larger desk for the long haul. (And if we’re FORCED to have lunch at Chipotle, then so be it.) After many years of happy laptopping, I’ll be gradually making the shift over to a desktop computer again. My laptop has been giving me subtle hints that its “get up and go” has “got up and went”, so I’ll be relieving it of a lot of its duties so it can just be a carefree laptop once again – unencumbered by the monstrosities that are Photoshop and Illustrator.

I’ll still need to paint this ugly little room – but thankfully it’s mostly windows and not a lot of wall space. Hopefully I’ll be able to share a little before and after shot sometime next month – as long as I don’t get distracted by something shiny.

You know who loves this room just the way it is, though?

This little guy right here.