The lonely nomadic workspace versus the computer with a stable home life

Unlike this man, my computer has a desk (and a roof, and walls).  Not only a desk, but a lovely chair.  It's got a system of cable organization, and a keyboard tray with a keyboard in it.  My computer has a home.

My significant other has a computer too.  It used to live on the coffee table, and then when the video card broke, it began living on the entertainment center, with our TV being the monitor.  When he wants to work, he pulls a chair from the kitchen table toward the center of the room, and pulls out a wireless keyboard.

At first these nomadic office habits drove me crazy.  I was willing to downgrade to one bookshelf and buy a second desk.  But as my long lost friend (I promise she will blog again some day) glitter-and-spandex has made clear, working side by side is not always the best solution.  And when a cloffice just isn't viable, what's a grad student to do???

Anyhow, I have come to accept and even like the idea of an office-less workspace.  Unplggd has several bloggers who confess to working from the couch, or wherever they fancy.

Also, working from the couch invites the possession of cool foldaway laptop desks that can double as side tables, or TV dinner holders.  This one is also from Unplggd.

Or coffee tables that fold out into desks, like this one from Apartment Therapy!

The typical graduate student can't afford a separate home office, and my little desk sure does take up a lot of space in our studio.  A nice little nomadic sofa-office is sounding nicer and nicer. 

Dreams Kinda Realized: The new Coffee Table and the Craigslist Roller Coaster

So we didn't end up building our dream coffee table, but we did get an awesome new coffee table.  My super talented cousin had a homemade bench lying around that he added a deck to, and then I waxed the new pieces, and now we have a cute little interim coffee table.  Check it out.

The hard part right now is getting the wicker chest off our hands.  I've had several bites on Craigslist, but people keep standing me up!  I've even talked to people on the phone several times, where they seemed very trustworthy and friendly.  We set up times (this has happened twice so far), and I changed my schedule to make sure I was home, and they simply never showed.  No call, no nothing!  I called and left messages on both their machines, and nothing.  And now I have this guy offering to send me a money order on the chest if I "reserve" it for him, but he doesn't know when he can pick it up, which is super sketchy.  Here it is, in all of its antique, wickery loveliness.

Until we sell it, we're using it at the foot of the bed to store comforters.  We did have another Craigslist success a few days ago, however!  I posted our old Sony television for $50, and it sold immediately.  It was a quality TV, but BIG, like heavier than my whole couch, and deep enough to stick obtrusively into the middle of our tiny living area.  S.O. originally got it from a friend, who picked it up for free from his family's trailer park when the original owners upgraded to a flat screen.  And now it's our turn to upgrade!  We're going to Costco tomorrow to make the big purchase.  Until then, it's been pretty relaxing to be TV-less for a few days, even though it was over the New Year.  Who needs Dick Clark to ring in 2011 when you have homemade pizza and good company?

Dreaming Big: New Coffee Table

S.O. and I have been vaguely discussing the idea of a new coffee table.  His problem: the antique wicker chest that we are using currently is too high, and hurts his knees when he puts his feet up.  My problem: the antique wicker chest that we are currently using is seriously not my style.

I would prefer something simple and elegant and mid-century.

Like this one, from Door Sixteen	Or this one, from CB2
Or this one, from...ummm...Google Images

But the antique wicker chest does have one big advantage over these minimalist leggy lovelies...STORAGE.  Sigh, the eternal quest for storage in the studio apartment.  We give a pile away to Goodwill at least once a month, and yet our volume of stuff just continues to grow.  My S.O.'s REI addiction is not helpful, and neither is my inability to get rid of books.  But anyhow, let's not play the blame game here. Our new coffee table needs to at least have a nice second shelf, like this Danish one.

Why are Danish things so awesome?

We're thinking that the most economical option, and the one that will best suit or various tastes will be to go DIY on this one.  My cousin, a talented carpenter on his off time, generously offered to let us use some of his extra wood.  S.O. suggested that we do something with slats, because most of the wood my cousin has is 2x4s, and apparently this might lend itself to a slatty type of table.

 S.O. is excited about this idea because it makes the table stronger.  Apparenlty bowling alleys orient the wood on the lanes sideways like this in order to protect it from the poundage of thousands of poorly thrown bowling balls.  I like this idea because it reminds me of those benches that they always have in museums, that I am totally obsessed with.  This one is actually called, "The Museum bench."

"The Museum Bench."  Super strong, like a bowling alley.  Built to sustain hundreds of butts per day.

If we built a table top like that one, we could put it on some cheap but stylish IKEA legs like these and VOILA.

We're still working on how to incorporate a little storage into the design.  It can be done.  Check this out from 54Dean.  Slats, storage, modern, leggy.  The dream.  It would take a set of tools and a level of craftsmanship far beyond what we have available to put something like this together.

The dream.

Ours will still be awesome though.  I'd like to stain it to show off the wood. I love the color of this wood on a DIY desk from Manhattan Nest.

I'm obsessed with this desk from made by Daniel, a college student who writes a blog at manhattan-nest.com

Or this bench, made from an old fence.

Anyhow, I'll keep the blog updated about our awesome future slatted coffee table.  Here's a couple of extra photos for inspiration.

Etsy stuff for the design-minded grad student

Notebooks

Mouse pads

USB drives

Laptop cases

Chairfest 2010: That's right, I inherited an Aeron Chair

When you spend the majority of your life on your ass, completely motionless except for spasms of violent typing, you end up thinking about chairs way too much.  I spent my first year in this apartment sitting on a wooden, farm-style, unpadded kitchen chair.

Recently I purchased an awesome mid-century pleather chair for six dollars at the flea market, which was a slight upgrade, but it doesn't swivel, nor does it give me any lumbar support (you heard me, lumbar support).  So when my mother offered me one of her old Herman Miller Aeron office chairs, I was ecstatic.  Not only are they pretty, they are unbelievably comfortable, they swivel, and they provide lumbar support.  And did I mention they were pretty?

Doesn't it look nice in my little office corner?  I love it so much.  I feel like my lower back is already in less pain.  I can feel the stress sheeting off me like granite.  Ah, Aeron chair, you inspire me to poetry and nature comparisons.

And now my six dollar chair can be used for extra seating around the coffee table!

As a side note, if you like chairs, check out chairfag.com.

On-campus office makeover?

Now that I co-habitate, I've been spending a lot more time in my on-campus office, which is basically my advisor's storage space with a desk in it.

It needed a lot of sprucing up when I first started using it.  I  managed to procure an office chair from my advisor's lab, which I then awkwardly carried across campus with everyone staring at me.  I also rearranged the furniture, putting the desk in the corner, and the wooden chairs in what seemed like convenient places for visiting students to relax.

There is a nice "Women in Science" poster that was there when I moved in, and a lot of filing cabinets.  There are also boxes full of "hands-on" and "inquiry" science activities, and shelves of awesome kids books about bugs and dinosaurs.  I definitely have wasted hours of my time with those books.

There is also a lovely carpet cleaning device that maintenance left there several months ago and I guess forgot about?

But it definitely needs some more character.  I can't do anything drastic, as the office technically belongs to my advisor, and could leave my hands at any moment depending on the status of her grants.  But maybe a poster or two?  Tapestry?  Chandelier?  I'll keep you posted.

On desks.

This is an awesome 6 minute documentary about desks.

Desk - Music and Sound Design from Aaron Trinder Film:Motion:Music on Vimeo.

My collection of clutter orphanages.

I'm all about "a place for everything and everything in its place." So much so, in fact, that I have trouble purchasing things if I cannot imagine exactly where they will go, even if there is an obvious need. Like, my boyfriend really wants to buy a toaster, but I can't imagine where we would put a toaster. So we continue to make toast on the cast iron skillet, because I stubbornly refuse to buy an appliance without first establishing a storage solution for it.

Anyhow, there are a lot of things that appear all over a studio apartment that simply don't have a "place" of their own. Keys, hair ties, lighters, watches, etc. So I've started putting containers everywhere to catch this stuff, and its been fairly successful. I think of them as clutter orphanages, for stuff that has no "place" of its own.

There's the table by the door clutter orphanage.

And the random snacks clutter orphanage.

This is my bedside table clutter orphanage.

And this is my desktop clutter orphanage.

And of course the toilet clutter orphanage.

Cloffice: The Sequel

So, this is my current cloffice situation:




Breathtakingly beautiful I KNOW.

Now that school has started and I'm ACTUALLY using the cloffice, some of the, uh how shall we say, limitations of working in a closet are really getting to me. I used my cloffice over summer while taking a summer class, but one summer class does not equal 4 actual classes during the school year.

As you can see I've decorated a bit [What's up sweet-ass free calendar from Arabic bookstore! Oh hey blank white-board! What's happenin' little pencil cup!], but I also have piles and piles of crap that i have nowhere else to put. Also this is my cloffice companion:



I took this picture sitting in my desk chair. Yes, that is a built-in shoe rack on my right as I work. This shoe rack and I have really become quite close, hanging in the cloffice all day. When I made this cloffice, I had all these grand ideas of turning the shoe rack into a file-storage-system [HOW COOL WOULD THAT BE? SERIOUSLY] but, alas, we need somewhere to put our shoes. And that place just so happens to be all up in my space.

The biggest problem I'm running into with my cloffice is storage. Grad school means a lot of papers, a lot of books, a lot of stuff that I need organized. Underneath my desk serves as the catchall space for EVERYTHING IN THE APARTMENT THAT HAS NOWHERE ELSE TO GO. I can't really justify moving something like the earthquake supply kit to put articles about rap videos. So I'm at a cloffice impasse. Thoughts? Anyone know how to make my cloffice my bitch?

[Also for those wondering that mug does say "Rocket Scientists Shoot for the Stars". Yes it is the best mug ever].

Book Piles: You call it "mess," I call it "design."

Graduate student + tiny rented studio + inability to get rid of books = a lot of books, with not a lot of places to put them. Sure I've got some Ikea bookshelves (who doesn't?), but they are packed to the brim, and I don't want to drill too many holes in my rented walls.  Security deposit, you will be mine again!!!!!

So it happens like this. I put down a book. Then when I have another book, and I want to put it down, I end up putting it on the other book because it's convenient. This happens a few times, and all of a sudden a book pile has grown in the corner of the room like some kind of fungus.

BUT is the book pile really a bad thing?  Apparently piled up books is becoming something of a design trend. Check out the artful book piles at the top of this post.  And for those who have trouble stacking on their own, there are even expensive bookshelves that make it look like your books are stacked even though they are actually shelved.  This is the "Sapien Bookcase," by Bruno Rainaldi.

So I say go for it with the book stacking.  Not only do they make you look like you're exceptionally well-read (or a total show-off), they can even stand in as "functional furniture," like with these nightstands, from apartment therapy.

In fact, who needs furniture, why not build your whole apartment out of stacks of books?

Or not.  Anyhow, I think sometimes it looks nice to have a few well placed stacks of books.  And it certainly is convenient, as it's fast (where DOES the time go in graduate school??) and does not require purchasing bookshelves or drilling of any kind.   For those of us who lust after the ultimate Beauty & The Beast library, maybe it even gives our crowded and computer dominated doctoral existence a little old-fashioned luster.