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It’s all finished, and it’s glorious: my CARDBOARD OFFICE.
(Please ignore the construction materials on the floor)
(Please ignore the construction materials on the floor)
When my dad ordered a treadmill (to keep us all active while sheltering in place), it came in an absolutely enormous box and I couldn’t bear to just throw it in some recycling bin
So instead I claimed a corner of the house, everyone’s spare Amazon boxes, and a roll of packing tape. Those ended up being the main materials, plus string from a previous art project and a few other bits and bobs. Eventually I also broke out the drill for easier hole-punching!
I was trying to keep the corners square and make enough support to hold up a floating desk. I was making a box fort, but I also kind of needed a place to hang out with my laptop! Hence: cardboard engineering time
The cat was deeply intrigued and kept me company through most of this process, despite his usual inexplicable fear of cardboard (don’t most cats like boxes? Mine DOES NOT)
Anyways. Toilet paper tubes became a light fixture, desk was installed, supports (rescued from the food bank, some kind of compressed paper) were added, windows were cut
And with the clerestory and skylights, I felt pretty good about the state of things. Time to move in:
Every office needs some lamps and a desk plant. Ditto to a phone dock and a laptop charger.
Plus a bookshelf (displaying field guides, mostly, plus a Mary Oliver needlepoint because why not)
On the desk, a tardigrade stress ball (ty @JVenook), some pens, binoculars... there are birds right outside my window, see? (Anyone know what these are supposed to be?)
(There are actual real birds outside the actual real window though, I’ve used those binoculars a couple of times now. A very nice Townshend’s warbler the other day)
Of course I needed a pin board, with a few keepsakes. A calendar (are we out of March yet??) and a “motivational cat poster”
Go ahead and zoom in on my wall clock
A legitimately cozy workspace. Why? Because pandemic? Because I don’t like seeing things go to waste? Because I am still at heart a real weird kid?
I am enough of a real weird kid that the next giant box that comes my way is definitely becoming a spaceship. Office becomes mission control. Cat will have to be the astronaut, so I guess I’ll need to condition him out of his cardboard box thing
While I have you here... @Samaritan_House is doing its holiday distribution via gift cards and a drive-through this year. We're trying to make things festive for struggling families in San Mateo -- can you help? https://www.roonga.com/samhouseholiday
We also feed people! Thousands of people per week. You can support that effort (and the super cute extra awesome kitchen and pantry staff) here: https://samaritanhousesanmateo.org/donate/#litag=AMB20
