Welcome to Our Office
.....headquarters of the home and business
Way back when I first started this blog I began going through different rooms in our house.
I got away from that and I'd like to go back.
We spent time on our porch, in the foyer and the kitchen.
Since I am working on organizing the office I thought I'd share that with you.
We go through the doors into the foyer with the grand stair case leading upstairs and passages on both sides to either the living room or the library. When we turn to the left of the stairs we see a brass sign that says, "Library" (a gift from our daughter that she found at a yard sale!). Next to that is a display of antique keys on the door framing. As we pass through the library to get to the office you will see books on shelves on all but one wall. Against that wall is my dad's piano. Scanning the room quickly as we walk through you will see many antiques, and what used to be another fireplace but is now being used as a book case for storing more books----it is unfinished. We will spend some time in my library sometime soon, but not now. We go through a large framed-in opening in the wall that will some day contain either portieres or French doors.
These rooms used to be a living and dining room before we remodeled this old Craftsman duplex. There were identical ones on the other side of the house which are now all an open living room. The floors are hard wood and there is lots of woodwork on the windows and doors that match them. This is the side of the house where the owners lived, a mirror-image of the other side (which they rented) except
for a larger kitchen, a full bathroom, and the later addition of a large picture window where a single one used to exist and a closet added onto the room.
This is our office.
It is now where we keep family files, things for the landscape business my husband owns, a phone, bookcases and a hutch for office supplies and where I hide many entertainment paraphernalia behind closed doors on the bottom.
There is a bulletin board on the wall, some files, a printer, my father's desk, my mother's office chair sitting atop a red, gold and green Oriental-type rug. The off-white walls will be painted a dark gold. The decorating theme is patriotic as can be seen in the decor on the walls and shelves. It is the warmest place in the house in the summer and the coldest spot in the winter. The huge picture window is hidden behind curtains and a long, tall hutch because the triple plane glass cracked as the house settled in the years after we moved it here---something we were told to expect but hoped to avoid. Since we are planning a big remodel in the next few years, done a little at a time, it hasn't been fixed yet. When it is, it will be made smaller and out of stained glass and this may morph again into a formal dining room, the ample closet being paneled, Craftsman-style, into a lighted china, silver and crystal area and the door removed.
There are shelves holding business files, manuals, proposals and the statements we send out. On another book case are old family-friendly movies in VHS that we loan out to friends all the time.
. Sitting at the desk I can see out the library window to the front yard and porch. There is a closet that houses games, puzzles, toy bins for the grandkids, extra folding chairs, tables and a vacuum cleaner. The office has another door-less opening that leads into the kitchen and dining room with a short hall with door leading to the bathroom, a utility closet and is a walkway into the kitchen/dining area.
"The room" as it was once called for lack of a clearly definitive use at one time, has had many names over the years we have lived here.
My vision for this room even before we moved it out here to the country was for it to be a schoolroom. I home schooled our children from 1982-2002 and I thought being off the library, and the kitchen and bathroom would be very handy. Oh, I spent hours joyfully decorating and organizing it similarly to the one we had in our previous home. There was a large black board, a huge bulletin board (both purchased for a few dollars at an after-fire school sale, bookcases, alphabet cards all along the walls, shelves, the usual school room art work, and construction paper caterpillars with the names of books read on each segment inching their ways around the schoolroom walls. We even got some lift-top desks after a school remodel. We had a wooden and iron college note-taking desk and a pre-schooler-sized antique wooden desk with an ink well in it. There were maps, science posters, globes of Earth and the Moon, lots of paper, sharpened pencils, scissors and glue, paints, markers and pens. It was perfect.
Well, it would have been except for one thing.
When our house was on the university campus where it was built over 100 years ago there was a pear tree in front of the picture window. Whenever we went there on campus to work on the house before it was moved we saw wasps all over that tree. The tree had to be removed and before it was destroyed, or maybe because of the cool Fall temperatures, the wasps must have moved inside the walls of this room. As the house was finished and after we moved in and the house began to warm up the wasps decided to come in where it was warmer. At first we'd notice one or two a week but later there would be 20 or more a day crawling from the closet and flying toward the window in front of the children's desks. We could hear them hit the glass and we'd run to swat them. After sunset they would gather on the chain of the antique light fixture and sleep in the warmth coming from it. When my husband would get home he would spray them with ether and we'd stomp them all. They were very slow wasps, not aggressive at all like yellow jackets or other wasp and hornet varieties, but this drill was getting old. So, the kids were moved to the kitchen table, the school room being used primarily for storage of the school supplies and textbooks. After a few years of not really using that room, the kids became more comfortable at the dining room table, or on cold winter days gathered around the wood stove studying, doing seat work or listening to me "lecture" them, read to them or having discussions on different topics.
I mourned the loss of that room as a school room. It was so cute!
The kids didn't really care. Eventually the wasps disappeared totally,
but the room was never to be a schoolroom again.
It became my husband's office. This didn't work out. Whereas my husband is not a messy man, he is decidedly not a paperwork kind of guy. He would prefer a smile, an agreement and a handshake to all the hoops that must be jumped through now if you own your own business. This would work for him because he is a man of great integrity. But............. Things piled up on the desk making it an eyesore. So, the huge desk, files, everything was exiled to a far, hidden corner of our unfinished basement where it still sits, unused, today. There is talk of de-cluttering and reorganizing the desk to be used once again. Isn't the definition of insanity doing the same thing over and over the same way and yet expecting different results?
I'm just sayin'.................
.....headquarters of the home and business
Way back when I first started this blog I began going through different rooms in our house.
I got away from that and I'd like to go back.
We spent time on our porch, in the foyer and the kitchen.
Since I am working on organizing the office I thought I'd share that with you.
We go through the doors into the foyer with the grand stair case leading upstairs and passages on both sides to either the living room or the library. When we turn to the left of the stairs we see a brass sign that says, "Library" (a gift from our daughter that she found at a yard sale!). Next to that is a display of antique keys on the door framing. As we pass through the library to get to the office you will see books on shelves on all but one wall. Against that wall is my dad's piano. Scanning the room quickly as we walk through you will see many antiques, and what used to be another fireplace but is now being used as a book case for storing more books----it is unfinished. We will spend some time in my library sometime soon, but not now. We go through a large framed-in opening in the wall that will some day contain either portieres or French doors.
These rooms used to be a living and dining room before we remodeled this old Craftsman duplex. There were identical ones on the other side of the house which are now all an open living room. The floors are hard wood and there is lots of woodwork on the windows and doors that match them. This is the side of the house where the owners lived, a mirror-image of the other side (which they rented) except
for a larger kitchen, a full bathroom, and the later addition of a large picture window where a single one used to exist and a closet added onto the room.
This is our office.
It is now where we keep family files, things for the landscape business my husband owns, a phone, bookcases and a hutch for office supplies and where I hide many entertainment paraphernalia behind closed doors on the bottom.
There is a bulletin board on the wall, some files, a printer, my father's desk, my mother's office chair sitting atop a red, gold and green Oriental-type rug. The off-white walls will be painted a dark gold. The decorating theme is patriotic as can be seen in the decor on the walls and shelves. It is the warmest place in the house in the summer and the coldest spot in the winter. The huge picture window is hidden behind curtains and a long, tall hutch because the triple plane glass cracked as the house settled in the years after we moved it here---something we were told to expect but hoped to avoid. Since we are planning a big remodel in the next few years, done a little at a time, it hasn't been fixed yet. When it is, it will be made smaller and out of stained glass and this may morph again into a formal dining room, the ample closet being paneled, Craftsman-style, into a lighted china, silver and crystal area and the door removed.
There are shelves holding business files, manuals, proposals and the statements we send out. On another book case are old family-friendly movies in VHS that we loan out to friends all the time.
. Sitting at the desk I can see out the library window to the front yard and porch. There is a closet that houses games, puzzles, toy bins for the grandkids, extra folding chairs, tables and a vacuum cleaner. The office has another door-less opening that leads into the kitchen and dining room with a short hall with door leading to the bathroom, a utility closet and is a walkway into the kitchen/dining area.
"The room" as it was once called for lack of a clearly definitive use at one time, has had many names over the years we have lived here.
My vision for this room even before we moved it out here to the country was for it to be a schoolroom. I home schooled our children from 1982-2002 and I thought being off the library, and the kitchen and bathroom would be very handy. Oh, I spent hours joyfully decorating and organizing it similarly to the one we had in our previous home. There was a large black board, a huge bulletin board (both purchased for a few dollars at an after-fire school sale, bookcases, alphabet cards all along the walls, shelves, the usual school room art work, and construction paper caterpillars with the names of books read on each segment inching their ways around the schoolroom walls. We even got some lift-top desks after a school remodel. We had a wooden and iron college note-taking desk and a pre-schooler-sized antique wooden desk with an ink well in it. There were maps, science posters, globes of Earth and the Moon, lots of paper, sharpened pencils, scissors and glue, paints, markers and pens. It was perfect.
Well, it would have been except for one thing.
When our house was on the university campus where it was built over 100 years ago there was a pear tree in front of the picture window. Whenever we went there on campus to work on the house before it was moved we saw wasps all over that tree. The tree had to be removed and before it was destroyed, or maybe because of the cool Fall temperatures, the wasps must have moved inside the walls of this room. As the house was finished and after we moved in and the house began to warm up the wasps decided to come in where it was warmer. At first we'd notice one or two a week but later there would be 20 or more a day crawling from the closet and flying toward the window in front of the children's desks. We could hear them hit the glass and we'd run to swat them. After sunset they would gather on the chain of the antique light fixture and sleep in the warmth coming from it. When my husband would get home he would spray them with ether and we'd stomp them all. They were very slow wasps, not aggressive at all like yellow jackets or other wasp and hornet varieties, but this drill was getting old. So, the kids were moved to the kitchen table, the school room being used primarily for storage of the school supplies and textbooks. After a few years of not really using that room, the kids became more comfortable at the dining room table, or on cold winter days gathered around the wood stove studying, doing seat work or listening to me "lecture" them, read to them or having discussions on different topics.
I mourned the loss of that room as a school room. It was so cute!
The kids didn't really care. Eventually the wasps disappeared totally,
but the room was never to be a schoolroom again.
It became my husband's office. This didn't work out. Whereas my husband is not a messy man, he is decidedly not a paperwork kind of guy. He would prefer a smile, an agreement and a handshake to all the hoops that must be jumped through now if you own your own business. This would work for him because he is a man of great integrity. But............. Things piled up on the desk making it an eyesore. So, the huge desk, files, everything was exiled to a far, hidden corner of our unfinished basement where it still sits, unused, today. There is talk of de-cluttering and reorganizing the desk to be used once again. Isn't the definition of insanity doing the same thing over and over the same way and yet expecting different results?
I'm just sayin'.................
During a time when my mother and grandmother came for a visit, the room became a guest room. It remained a guest room for quite awhile and several guests occupied it as did I after major surgery 12 years ago. Shortly after that it was reborn as the office that it is today. After we got a computer it was put in here. I got a bookcase to store the business things and it has become more and more useful as an office. Here I write my blog, communicate with family and friends, do the business billing, proposals, handle correspondence for the business and manage the home. For years we just called it "The Room" because after it was no longer used as a schoolroom it had no identity or function.
But it is now comfortably "The Office"..............
I am the primary user of the room. It is my bridge, cockpit, driver's seat. I am the "gal Friday" as they used to say.......or the wizard behind the curtain! It is from here that the home runs. I am the source in the home. I make plans, take care of minor details, organize everything, plan our menus, keep track of what's going on, keep things running. I have always loved jobs, in the days before children when I worked outside the home, where I was that source. I love being the one everyone comes to for help, the one relied upon to keep things running smoothly, behind the scenes, not the boss/head, but having the glorious role of meeting others' needs, serving others, making an oasis, a refuge from the world, setting the mood or what I call
"the countenance" or flavor of the home.
Oh, how I love this.
We women at home are sources, facilitators within the families. Facil in French means "easy". So a facilitator makes everything easier, more comfortable, for others in the running of the household. We are trusted, relied upon, needed. There is creativity involved, a spirit of being that servant as our Lord was on Earth and as He commands in His Word. We need management skills, tact, knowledge in so many areas, strength, patience, respect and a huge amount of creativity especially as times get hard for whatever reason.
This room, as I look around it, has elements that are needed for my vocation, my high calling.
- Renewing my heart and spirit: my bible and prayer (which I can take with me anywhere I go), access to family, good friends, sisters in Christ, Christian women's blogs. Chatting with, emailing and FB "chats" with my family and friends, "skyping", and a box of kleen-ex for when I miss my family or when I pray.
- Organization: a desk, planners, lists, phones, computer, paper, pens, files, a place for toys, calendars, a clock, business shelves, bulletin boards, organizers.
- Creativity: my bible, a book of poems and prose, a hymnal, books filling the library, a comfy place to sit, a view to the outdoors, a computer to write or type out my lists, my menus, ideas, Pinterest, Christian women's sites/blogs, my blog, "chat" and "skype" with those who are far away, a nearby piano, music and art hanging on one wall almost floor to ceiling.
- Fun: a bookcase of movies, a closet-full of games, toys, puzzles, craft supplies, and lots of books.
- Entertaining: a calendar, a phone, computer, plates, punch bowls, pizza plates, pasta plates, disposable forks, knives and spoons, napkins, table cloths, large serving bowls
- Thankfulness: my bible, scripture cards on a bulletin board, patriotic decor, family pictures, a window, view of the foyer, library, the porch, dining room, living rooms and the things that occupy them. Being within ear shot of my husband arriving home so I can welcome him.There are many more things I could list given long enough to think about them.
But, the little basket on my desk reminds me that I have things I must accomplish today, yes, here at this desk in our office.
Pray for strength in the hard times, in the times you are exhausted (I stayed up until 5am looking for two pieces of paper I needed for today. I found one.)
God is near unto you. Stay near unto Him.
Guard your hearts, ladies.......you have been given the most wonderful job in the world.
Enjoy this day and your most high calling.
Kathi~
No comments:
Post a Comment