I’m almost sorry to be going back to work tomorrow.* Not all-the-way sorry: it’s good work with good people, and mama likes being able to pay her bills.

Still, I’d had fantasies about what I’d be able to do with two full weeks off-the-clock: I was hoping to do a whole bunch of decluttering and start rearranging my home office so that I can treat myself to a real, functional desk for here. Now that I’ve been working here every day for 9 months, with no end in sight, and doing more writing AND with grad school on the horizon, it’d be really nice to have a workspace bigger than 19″ by 40″.

But the truth is that I was so burned out after 2020 that it took me a number of days just to unwind from that. And then there was the time and effort I put into hosting my first solo grown-up Christmas. So I didn’t really turn my attention to the house until this past Wednesday or so—and even then, I balanced my efforts on that score against my (entirely legitimate) desire for rest & relaxation.

All of which is to say: I’m still a bit of a ways from having the office cleaned up enough to make room for a replacement of my elementary-school desk.

Still, I’m glad of what I managed to get done in these few days. I filled several more boxes for Goodwill, and have emptied out more than a dozen file boxes that were holding various stuff that had been stowed down in the basement at various points in time when we were trying contain and conceal my hoarder’s mess in advance of hosting friends over for some sort of event or other.

(Ah, the pre-COVID days when we were able to host parties!)

Now starting in the basement when I want to re-design my office might seem a bit ass-backwards, but there was a method to my madness. You see, one of the main features in my office is two tall, over-stuffed bookshelves. And I’m gonna need to box up all those books before those shelves can be moved. Same with the other little cabinets I have in here.

So generating these empty boxes now has me in a position where I can box up the contents of this room in advance of ordering new furniture, moving the old furniture I want to keep using, and clearing out the old furniture I want to get rid of.

And all of that is a reward in itself. But the clutter fairies have also rewarded me for my diligence by granting me the pleasure of unearthing various treasures from my years here in our little house on the hill.

First I found a couple SD cards with a bunch of photos from the Baltic Cruise we took way back when.

Next was the unopened package of iTunes gift cards, and after that, one of my favorite winter newsboy caps.

Finally—at least to date—is my pretty blue point-and-shoot camera, found yesterday, which had more Baltic pictures on its SD card. And I found the battery charger for said camera today, saving me from having to buy anything to make this functional again!

Who knows? With this new old camera, I might even up my Instagram game!

I know it’ll be hard to sustain this momentum once I’m back in the grind tomorrow, but I’m hoping these various rewards—not just these small treasures, but the dream of a nicer room—will help me keep my motivation and progress going over the coming days and weeks.

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* Activity and schedule-wise, I mean. Massachusetts’s COVID stats have ensured that I am still working from my little third-grader sized desk here in the home office for the foreseeable future.

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Image credits:

• School desks: Pixabay, open license.
• All others: photos taken by the author, subject to a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.