Rearranging My Room: A Journey in Creativity

I’m writing to you from a different place. I’m still at my desk and I’m still in my writing room but it’s all very different. 

For a long time I have been complaining, mostly in my head, and a little out loud if I’m honest, that I don’t have enough space in my writing room. I have always wanted a studio with a couple of long work benches.  One for my art and craft supplies and all my sewing and knitting stuff and another with my watercolour paints and brushes all laid out ready to go, along with all my paper supplies. Plus I’d need my analogue writing desk and my lap top desk and my armchair for reading of course. Then I’d need heating and cooling and just the right aspect to gaze out of the window during pensive moments. 

What I actually have is our son’s old bedroom with two small desks and an armchair. We built on a decking area just outside the room and replaced the window with French doors. The space feels bigger now and it is a lovely space, despite being small.

Over the last twelve weeks I’ve been having treatment on my arthritic knees. It has meant a lot of taking it easy after each treatment. On one of those rest days I realised the wardrobe in my writing room was not very accessible. My art supply trolley was half blocking the wardrobe making it tricky to access anything inside.

I decided to completely change the room around so I could access the wardrobe and use it more efficiently. It’s always when you have to take it easy that you need to move the furniture isn’t it? When the urge to Spring clean hits I tend to go with it. 

It wasn’t until I was sitting in my new position, after shifting the room around, that I realised I was under utilising the wardrobe itself. 

Half of the wardrobe was filled with boxes of books, old CD’s and oodles of empty bags and old coat hangers. The guest room had a similar situation in its wardrobe.

It occurred to me that I could use the guest room wardrobe for storing stuff we rarely use and have the fabric stash in the room where I create stuff. Why had I never thought of it before? 

You can imagine the ensuing turmoil of emptying out two wardrobes and dragging stuff from one room to another, with the help of both dogs of course. Now I was rearranging not one room but two. 

Does that ever happen to you? You start off with an idea and it snowballs into completely revamping the house and rearranging most of the the furniture. It happens to me a lot more than I’d like. Tidying up the bookshelf often becomes rearranging my whole life. 

Then there’s the extra storage units needed to hold it all. Thankfully I quickly found a small shelving unit, online, that would sit in the wardrobe to store all my lovely fabrics and all the water colour paper and paraphernalia that go along with art-ing.

I’m one of those people who can’t do just one thing. When I was young I was into a whole spectrum of creative arts. Piano, violin, guitar, singing, drama, dancing, puppets clowning, juggling to name a few. Even now,  I can’t just write. I have to make, paint, craft, knit and sew stuff. 

They thought I was too scattered, I needed to focus. They thought life would be easier for me if I chose one.  I found it impossible and I hated it. If I focussed on drama, I missed singing and if I focussed on guitar, I missed puppets. 

I felt ‘less than’ when people tried to make me fit their idea of who I should be. I began to feel as if there was something wrong with me. Maybe being multi-talented was a bad thing. I envied people who had a singular purpose. 

Now that I’m older and wiser I can tell you that I have learnt that the multi focus thing is who I am and it’s perfectly ok to be me. In fact who I am is pretty awesome. I can adapt to pretty much any environment and can do a plethora of things and do them well. It worked well in my career working with unpredictable teens; not to mention the many crazy environments I found myself in. Nothing phased me. I found it easy to go with the flow. Not everyone can. 

These days it looks like: some days I feel like writing and other days I feel like painting and that’s ok. Being retired means I can do whatever I want, including changing the rooms around to suit my needs. 

The new shelving unit is now in situ. Immediately full, surprise! Moving all the furniture to allow better access to said wardrobe was mammoth. Taking it easy for my knees? Glyn did a lot of the work and I spread it out over several days but I may have stuffed up my left knee for ever. *sigh*

It has had a positive impact on my creativity. It could just be Christmas, but I’ve been doing more creating. I’ve been sewing. Actual quilting took place! Though I still can’t leave my sewing machine set up, it’s still the same small space. I’ve also been drawing and painting, along with reading and a little writing. I’m enjoying the ‘new’ space. 

Somewhere in the shifting of the furniture and the rearranging of the rooms I may have found my missing mojo. I can’t say I’m back to full production, more like dabbling around the edges like a duck in a pond. I feel much more creative and curious than I have felt for a while. 

It may not be the studio of my dreams, but it is now a more efficient space and I have almost everything at my fingertips. In a world where ‘More’ is in the very air we breathe, my studio is ‘Enough’ and I am content. 

P.S. I used AI (shock horror) to generate some of the images, because it’s fun.