dog eared copy: My Future Self: Home Office Excavation: Week 6

Before: 6 Weeks Ago

Last week I mentioned that I've had an unintended, but not altogether unpleasant surprise: Now that I have space cleared in my Home Office, the dogs and my daughter now like to come visit! In the case of my daughter, she has actually moved in! She has a whole playroom to herself as well as a bedroom; but my Home Office is now where she likes to do her homework. So, we brought in her bean bag chair, her desktop and got a little rug to define her space. Now she has her own little encampment next to my non-fiction shelves. I found this very appropriate as my child has a very non-fiction sort of mind. My DH and I both love to read; but are somewhat more inclined towards fiction. Our daughter, however, is very much a non-fiction-oriented child. She would rather read reference books, books about how machines work and even cookbooks - rather than read a story. As cool as this is, she still needs to understand narrative; and chapter story books are a part of her required reading. After much fussing over homework and the mandatory 20+ minutes of reading that she must do every night, we finally hit upon the solution: She reads in her space, in her bean bag chair while I hang out with her. When she has finished reading her book en toto, we go to the local bookstore and pick out another book. This seems to be working well enough for now. I say "for now" because I'm not sure what is going to happen at the end of the year when the local bookstore closes. They have decided not to renew their lease, which will leave this town of sixty-thousand people without a bookstore. Sure there are a handful of used bookstores and an independent bookstore eleven miles away; but the neither has the selection that one would want and besides, I hate the indie bookstore that's eleven miles away - They are not helpful, friendly or knowledgeable :-( The library is another headache altogether and a topic for another post.

Anyway, we'll cross that bridge when we come to it (Can you cross a bridge before you get to it?) and for now we'll take a look at the progress I've made at the Home Office. There's still a lot of tchotchkes on top of the shelves. I seem to be fascinated by mostly three kinds of gewgaws: tins, figurines and mugs. With the lifestyle and space I'm leading and living in respectively, there's really no room for this stuff. What I need to do is throw away the broken figurines and Altoids tins and; pack the mugs and figurines away. The mugs and figurines I'm packing away may come out at another stage in my life, like when I'm old and take a liking to gilded vitrines; but not now :-)

If you're wondering, "Hey! You've posted two "Before" photos; but no "After" photo!" that would be because I haven't made much progress in this area. And that would be because as you're reading this, I'm actually in another city shopping for a couple of things for this room! Next week, I will show you what I came up with and talk about "Letting Go."

Also, next week on my tumblr blog, I will be introducing another phase of My Future Self. This phase will have to do with physical self improvement, health- and beauty-wise, from head to toe. That will be a feature that will post every Wednesday. If you're interested in following on tumblr, I'm "dog eared copy"