I've been looking for a second hand A0 desk, a particular make and model, for some time. I've been trying to store my printed A0 patterns, and it's not easy. I'm very tempted to just not bother.....but the time may come when my A0 printer no longer works, or it's not possible to project the pattern, so I am trying to print an A0 copy of each pattern I buy for safe storage.
A couple of days ago I saw an A0 desk advertised very cheaply. It was like a very rickety, one drawer, version of the one I've been waiting for and it was so cheap I thought we could chop it down and put it on a set of electric desk legs. We went and collected it on Friday.
In order to try and get it in, the whole of the small bedroom has to be reorganised. The small bedroom houses several bookcases, rammed with books and DVDs. One of those cupboards had to come out, so I ended up with bags of books and DVDs all around the top floor of the house. This was expected, and planned, but still a shed load of effort to do.
And then of course there were some unanticipated potential issues, so the Alternative Options had to be trialled. This meant that everything else that occupied floor space had to be removed from the room so that the large items could be shuffled around and solutions evaluated.
All that stuff ended up in the spare bedroom, which is now like a room in one of those hoarders houses that you see on TV. I can barely get in the door, and I certainly can't get to my sewing machines. Prior to this, I was part way through reorganising my extensive zips collection (I know how to push the boat out!), wth many, many piles of sorted zips organised into rows on the bed. (I'm waiting for some velvet pegs to arrive so I can hang them up, it wasn't one of my butterfly-attention-span projects).
I hope that I didn't disturb themtoo much as I was lobbing stuff in from the doorway.
The desk is now in, and everything else is still everywhere else, while I think about electric desk legs for it.
The 4 drawer filing cabinet, which is a casualty of the Alternative Option will have to go in the loft and be swapped with the 2 door filing cabinet, currently in the loft, that currently houses all our CDs.
I spent a short time today emptying the contents of the 4 drawer cabinet on to the top of the A0 desk. I then spent a huge amount of time trying to empty the CDs out of the other cabinet. It holds a surprising amount, they were tightly packed, and I discovered part way through emptying that they were no longer in alphabetical order. And they'd been put in so that the titles couldn't be seen. It was only because I was turning them round as I unpacked them that I realised what had happened, and I lost the battle of trying to ignore it. I lost the battle after emptying one crate out, so that first crate is still in disarray, and I'll need to rectify it when I put the CDs back in later.
I also found some old video CDs and some CD-i's (our CDi player was
stolen in 1997 when our previous house was burgled, but they didn't take
the discs) amongst the audio CDs. I was tempted to throw them away, but they are a part of
history so I'll put them in a labelled box.
And of course, I had to clear a path so that the exchange can take place later. It was like one of those little pizzles with one empty square that you have to move around until you get the whole picture. I did manage to throw a couple of bits out, while I was at it, so that was a win. A small one, but still a win.
I did find other things that I could chuck or donate, but I really struggle with overcoming my family trait of but it might come in handy. I used to be very good at being ruthless, but I'm finding it harder as I get older. I have to be in the right frame of mind.
I've bought another 2 drawer cabinet and I'm just making arrangements to collect it. Both cabinets will fit underneath the new desk, which is just as well. I'm resisting the temptation to drag everything back into the room and put it underneath the A0 desk space, because it will just need to be hoiked out again.
I'll see what it all looks like when I've got the cabinets in place and loaded.
