Pet Please #143: Spring Cleaning

It’s been 3 years since I really reorganized my home-office.

Just over 3 years ago, I started running Stonemaier Games full time. At that point, the biggest room in my condo was my bedroom and my office. My second bedroom was largely unused.

So a former coworker helped me reorganize, shifting my bedroom to the smaller space and dedicating the bigger room purely to Stonemaier.

Even though I’m pretty tidy, I’ve accumulated random stuff over the last three years: A hodgepodge of plastic, metal, and wood shelves, tons of sample games, prototypes, and replacement parts, and a number of random documents and brainstorming documents. Everything has slowly piled up on top of each other.

I use my office to host a weekly game night, and I don’t think I realized how the space had become less and less welcoming due to the piles of stuff and unsightly shelves. Fortunately, a good friend helped me see what I was missing, and today she helped me fix the problem.

It took about 6 hours of building, purging, and organizing…and man does it feel good! I keep walking in and out of the room just to experience the feel of it, and I’ve opened and closed the closet door at least a dozen times.

The cats are thoroughly confused, of course. But I think they’ll like the new shelves in the long run.

Do you know this feeling? For me, it’s intensely satisfying. Perhaps you can share in my pleasure via these before and after photos of the newly reorganized space:

Before:

After:

8 thoughts on “Pet Please #143: Spring Cleaning”

  1. Jamey,

    Congratulations! Yes, I feel your pain…and elation. When I moved from my previous townhouse to my current residence, I thought about moving the furniture into the same rooms as before. It was my girlfriend who pointed out that I never used my desk (an antique barrister’s desk from upstate PA) as it was on the ground floor and instead used my computer in the kitchen. So, following her advice (which has generally been a very good idea), I moved the desk upstairs and I turned, what would have been a library (it serves in the listing as a third bedroom with an ensuite bathroom), into my Game Room.

    What a difference. If we get a chance to chat over Skype, I can give you the tour, but basically, when you climb the stairs to the Main Floor, I have two tall bookshelves (one on either side) with my sk centered under ceiling lamp which served to illuminate a dining room table. I’ve never been the guy who likes a “dining room” when I have a perfectly good kitchen table (oh, and an island and pub table). Anyway, congrats on the purging; it’s one of the more cathartic things you can do for yourself.

    Cheers,
    Joe

    Reply
    • Joe: That’s great! Perhaps it’s one of those things where you really need a second set of eyes to see that things that you can’t. After seeing the new layout of my office, I can’t imagine it any other way (even though just 24 hours ago, I would have said the same for the old layout!)

      Reply
  2. Wow! This looks amazing. Were you using the closet for game items or clothing before? I don’t think I’d opened that door since I peed in there at Festivus once, long before you made the largest room into Stonemaier central.

    Reply
    • Trev: It’s been a closet for random Stonemaier stuff for a while now, but it was crammed full of stuff I never use. I filled 4-5 bags of recycling from it yesterday. Also, we’ve talked about this: The bathroom is literally 8 feet away!

      Reply
  3. LOL. Funny timing, I literally started the same process yesterday and am finishing up this morning! And it feels great. On a side note, just for clarification, you wrote “the space had become less and less unwelcoming” now I know you’re an introvert but do you mean it became MORE unwelcoming? Or are you trying to keep people away and failing? 😉

    Reply
    • Conor: Nice! I hope it goes well for you too. 🙂 And yes, that’s a typo–I’ve fixed it. I want people to feel good at game night!

      Reply
  4. I started a similar process at the beginning of the year, I start a new job in 100 days, and have to move. I’ve taken a few boxes and a few bags to goodwill, tossed out I don’t know how much stuff, and started boxing everything in the apartment, Almost have all my games. I’m lucky to have an unlimited supply of Multiplier paper boxes to help in the process. It is a great feeling to downsize like this, the next step is The kitchen!

    Reply

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