Mindy Carlson

During the pandemic, I moved out of the large home office Econ Husband and I shared and into a small bedroom at the opposite side of the house. It was for the best. I didn’t want to hear his meetings about the fate of the economy and his bosses didn’t want to see me acting out fight scenes in the background of those meetings.

This small bedroom was a stuffy little guest room with a trundle day bed and a table set up for my sewing projects. I moved my library table desk into this office and then used the sewing table for the paper over flow. It worked out “okay,” but it wasn’t the office of my dreams.

So I set about fixing that.

First, I went to Community Forklift, a local building materials recycling and salvage yard that is FREAKING AMAZING, to see if I could source a new desk. They didn’t have anything that would suit me, but they did have a slab of hickory from 1910 or something that they rescued from an old lumber yard that called to me. It said, “Make me a desk!” So I did.

About a year later.

Then I got a neat black bookcase from a friend who was downsizing for a move. Some cleverly applied wallpaper and she’s got a whole new lease on life.

I also moved one of our wingback chairs into the office as a reading chair and bought a red exercise ball chair for the desk.

And then! I decided to paint one of the walls peacock teal.

The effect is joyful. And I have one more improvement planned, but it means I need to source some empty picture frames I can spray paint gold. I’m also thinking I might need a small bookcase under the window to the right of the daybed.

My office is now one of my favorite places in the house. Which is the idea. I have to love coming into my office every morning. I have to want to hunker down inside it and let the words and ideas flow out of me and into my laptop.

I hope you’re in your favorite place today. And if you have a second, take a gander at my short and hilarious interview with Jeff Circle for his site The Dossier. Read it and you’ll get to hear about the time I almost killed myself on a treadmill.