Portrait of a Re-arranged Office 11/09/24
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They say that a picture is worth a thousand words. What they don't
say is that the adage was coined to sell ad space, which makes it
total bosh. The worth of pictures or words is subjective, and neither
is of greater value in a general sense.
But this is gopher, and you knew that. Plaintext is beautiful, etc.
I'm just preparing you, because I'm going to describe something that
would generally warrant a photo. A photo would be faster, but you're
not here because you're in a hurry, right?
I mentioned re-organizing my home office in a previous post. Because
this is my home, my office has doubled as a spare room of sorts, for
visitors. Previously, it had a large oak dresser with attached
mirror, as well as a bed and an oak nightstand. These weren't sized
well for the room and took far too much space. Next to the dresser
was my desk—wedged in, as it were, between the dresser and the wall.
A small shelf next to my desk held ham radio gear. Another shelf
opposite held some filing papers and some other random stuff.
At times, I would stick a 2nd small writing desk by the window, for
hobby stuff. Sometimes ham, sometimes retro computing. But it was
never quite big enough. The window is where my ham antenna connectors
come into the house.
That's the way it was.
With the reorg, I first removed the dresser. That wasn't easy, because
it's many drawers had become storage compartments, largely for my ham
and electronics stuff. A big, messy jumble of stuff. Wires, soldering
station, etc, all crammed into those draws when not in use. That, and
some desk stuff, and some computer stuff, and even a couple draws that
others in my household were storing things in. Ugh. But it was done,
and the dresser is gone.
To replace it, I purchased a 106in wide double desk. It takes most of
the wall (this is a small house built in the 70s, the rooms aren't as
generous as some newer places). I removed the shelf with papers and
stuff, and placed it in my bedroom. I left the important papers on
there, the rest was cleaned off. It actually works quite well in
there, in an unused corner. It has a salt lamp and some books now,
and looks nice. I also removed the night stand. The dresser and night
stand (plus another one that was being stored) are supposed to be sold
on some social media mess, but I'm not in charge of that.
The old desk went by the window, and is now my ham radio desk. One of
the shelves went with it, and it is holding ham gear as well. That
desk is well sorted, and cleaner than it was. It also has a few small
musical instruments, a hobby that I forgot partially because it's
scattered throughout the house. There's a kalimba, a chromatic
harmonica, a Coda "everyday carry" flute/ocarina, and some panpipes. I
had some bamboo flutes on the dresser; those moved to the wall,
hanging next to an acoustic bass, held by some jute twine in in a rope
ladder configuration. They're easy to take in and out that way—in
fact, one of them is out now, sitting on the desk in front of me.
These are all bamboo flutes made by John Wydysh of Portland's Saturday
Market some years ago. One is a custom southpaw flute he made for me
(not that I'm generally a southpaw, but for the bamboo flute I am).
I'm not sure if he's still there, but he was there for a good long
while, in the real market section before it blew up into the
commercial mess that it became.
The small bed stayed where it was. This is still technically a guest
room of sorts, it's just not as cozy as it once was.
The double desk is, well, twice as big as my last desk, and so it has
two purposes. On the left side is my retro computing station. I placed
my Epson Equity+ 8088 (that I won't shut up about) on the desktop
horizontally, above the drawer section. Atop that is a Citizen GSX-130
printer. Keyboard and screen are next to them, Genius serial mouse is
next, and behind that is my cassette tape case. On top of the case is
my custom z80 computer, RS-232 port switcher, and cassette player. I
recently purchased a Pocket386, which sits up there as well. Next to
the mousepad is my Commodore US*1M calculator, easily within reach of
my main workspace.
The right side of the double-desk is my actual work area. It has a
hydraulic standing desk that I picked up at a thrift shop for a dream,
made by Mi "Mount It". A NEC E223W, from the same thrift shop but a
while ago, is up there too, and there's another monitor mounted to the
wall behind. Also on the wall are some bits of corkboard, for ham
radio papers. The computer itself is on the desktop as well, but
vertical.
There are also two small metal shelves that I moved in here. One holds
industrial printing equipment, which I do some work on, and the other
has all my electronics hobby stuff. I cleaned the closed and organized
that as well, but I won't bother describing it.
It is nice to have better access to my things, but it was especially
nice to actually connect with and understand all my things together in
a short time. It was good to let some things go, including some that
I've clung to. I feel like the results of the project were more than I
aimed for, which is pleasant. And I feel like my working space is well
suited to my immediate and near future needs, which is wonderful.
Whether it's worth a photo or not is up to you, but there are my one
thousand words exactly.
