One thing that bugs me about my writing spaces is that they are NOT dedicated to only writing. At home, I have an Ikea curved desk-table in the window corner of the second bedroom, which also houses my spare bed, my wardrobe (which has been half-way through a 'these don't fit/these might fit one day/never wearing these again' reorganisation for the best part of a year now), the old dining room table which holds craft supplies, mending, an old sewing machine, a quilt which the cat has taken to sleeping in, and the underneath space is mostly filled with storage crates of things like outdoor clothing and files, plus two bookcases of miscellaneous and one of study-that-isn't-pure-work stuff. The desk itself has an old computer which is too good to throw away, a few of those smart boxes that are meant to make you organised but actually become homes for random stuff (which is at least out of sight most of the time), a printer, writing slope, assorted detritus, a pile of knitting magazines open at projects I will work on one day, the lap top I currently use for writing at home (perched on a stack of those boxes in an attempt to make me sit up better) and a cat-mat (because before I had a cat-mat on the desk, the cat used to either push stuff off to make space for herself or lie on whichever piece of paper I needed next...
Furball, lounging on her cat-mat. Her fur-suit is unfortunately palest on her wobbly undercarriage, as you can see...
Gazing out of the window whilst sitting on the cat-mat. Her behind tends to hang off the windowsill... it IS narrow. Her fur-suit looks all torbie (tortie-tabby, or talico in US-speak I believe) from behind - the ginger and white is underneath.
The cat-mat is positioned under the window, and the desk is pulled slightly away from the wall so that the heat from the radiator flows up the gap and is deflected by the windowsill onto the cat-mat - this seems to have finally stopped the problem where she presses herself against the heating vents on the computer...). Under the desk is an old suitcase (cat bed for more serious sleeping)
Grumpily on the suitcase-bed
and a stack of pillows and stuff that go on the bed (occasional cat bed) and various socks and slippers kicked off under there and not yet retrieved and things the cat knocked off the desk that rolled to hard-to-reach corners. On the spare bed is a slew of stuff, mostly work papers, with some magazines, novels, letters, various toiletries waiting to go into the storage closet, CDs, clean clothes waiting to go away (or rather, ones I actually wear which never get to the cupboards) and a disgruntled plushy dinosaur (my teddy-bear equivalent, made by my Mum when I was about 4. Mostly disgruntled due to wear and tear and occasional use as a, yes you guessed it, cat bed).
Triceratops-bear on a bed of general stuff. Must. Clean. All. The. Things!!!
Hmm, my cat clearly likes to have options, doesn't she? Yes, there is only one of her... currently snoring in the craft table duvet nest.
At work, my office desk is of course full of non-useful-writing work, administrivia and random bits of student work and teaching materials and memos and a toy mammoth and several novelty kitchen timers and a plush Bagpuss and a few interesting rocks and a cardboard plant which is supposedly unkillable but looks rather battered and a pile of reference books and key texts which I pull out to show to students so often that it seems daft putting them back on the shelf and coffee cups and the only reason there isn't any bench-work clutter is that I also have a basic microscope desk set-up in my office and so bench-work clutter compatible with office life (e.g. slides, notebooks, record sheets, special pens, random boxes of partly used dry supplies) goes there, along with bits of field equipment and maps and at this time of year the whole is lightly top-dressed with a mulch of teaching-related paperwork.
Any time I HAVE had a writing only space, it is a real tussle to keep it that way... I'm just not single-minded and my space reflects this, I guess. ALL my space.
Next summer, I hope not to have much if any fieldwork. And one of my plans around the house is to get a couple of nice screens and to partition the space in the second bedroom (door and window are in opposite walls but both at the eastern end of the room, so I could divide it into an inner space and an outer space), then reorganise the STUFF so that craft stuff, wardrobe stuff and guest-room (or more normally room where I sleep whilst guests sleep in my more organised, double-bedded first bedroom) is all in the hidden space and the outer space with window and door is actually an office... but it will take committment (and a not-bad back!), or else THAT will end up half done too, and half done is even less comfortable to live with than undone...
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