My home office is a disaster that’s been getting worse. The mess on the desk has been getting in the way of my getting stuff done, in part by keeping too many distractions within sight, and in part by being a hazard. Piles get knocked over, and I have to stop what I’m doing to pick them up.
It’s not been the greatest place to get work done.
The upstream issue is surface space. When we moved, I gained a few square feet of floor, but lost a lot of shelf space. The stuff that was on those shelves is still around, mostly in boxes or piles that migrate from place to place.
In a rare lucid moment the other day, I noticed that the 4-drawer file cabinet in the corner would fit into a space in the closet, freeing up just enough room for a bookshelf. I don’t open the file cabinet that often, and it would be the same distance from my desk if it moved.
Today, armed with a tape measure, I drove to the local Danish furniture store, found a tall bookshelf (some assembly required) that would fit the space (and would fit in the car with the back seat down), emptied the file cabinet and moved it into the closet, assembled the bookshelf, and filled it with books. And restocked the file cabinet. And dusted a bit.
Elapsed time: 3 hours, including coffee break.
That’s three hours I won’t have to apply to the large stack of work that I need to get done. But I suspect the time taken will pay for itself, and my wife is happy to see those boxes of books finally go away.