Anyone coming into one of my workspaces would hardly be overwhelmed by the neatness. That’s a nice way of saying they tend to be on the cluttered side. If I don’t use a spot regularly, then the likelihood of it being organized is actually fairly high, but in a space I’m constantly doing stuff in?
War zone.
So you’d think moving offices wouldn’t be that big of a deal. I’d go from one cluttered mess to another cluttered mess. However, my workspaces are a cluttered mess where I know where everything is. This is, of course, a key difference. They’re a mess because I get something and need to put it somewhere, and so I stick it wherever is convenient, telling myself that I’ll find a place for it eventually. (“Eventually” usually actually comes around, though that can be months and months later, depending on how permanent that something turned out to be.)
For me, moving spaces ends up having two big drawbacks. First of all, there’s an awful lot to move. I accumulate a lot over time, squirreling it away here and there in a way that undersells just how much stuff I have, even to people glancing at my cluttered office. But beyond the pain of moving, it ends up feeling fairly disorienting, as I no longer know where anything is.
I imagine this is the same for everyone, but I also tend to think it’s too easy to always assume what life is like for me is the same as what life is like for everyone else. I mean, surely there are people whose workspaces are self-contained, neat, and easy to move. (Actually, I know that for a fact, as someone else moved offices at the same time I did. It took him all of about one load, and that was including moving furniture.)
I really ought to declutter all of this stuff, and I feel bad that I haven’t, but at the same time, it takes time and attention to go through it all, and I always feel like there’s something else I could be doing with both my time and my attention, so it just ends up hanging around.
In any case, I’m moved now and slowly trying to find places for everything. If you’re on campus, my office is now on the main floor, back behind the main library desk. So, harder for people to just waltz in and talk to me, but much (much) easier to find. Then again, it’s also much noisier than where I was before, tucked away into a corner of the second floor. The good news is there’s pretty decent insulation in the walls, so closing the door makes a significant difference.
Give me a few weeks, and it’ll all feel like I’ve always been here. Right?
That sounds like my old office…?
It’s actually right next door! We added two new offices along the back wall, where Sarah’s space used to me. She’s now in my old office (which was maybe Kelly’s office when you were last here?) Lot’s of musical chairs since you’ve been gone. There are five offices going in on the second floor, where all the books used to be, and career services is moving in. Changes changes changes . . .