An Honest Look at my Work Space

Last updated on 20 December 2016

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I love seeing where people work. Not their place of work, as such, but their home desk, where they blog, where they Facebook, where they pour those creative juices out over their keyboards. Okay, that sounded gross, but you know what I mean.

There are some truly beautiful spaces out there and I love the clean, crisp layout of people’s desk, and their pin boards with beautifully aligned inspirational quotes and memos. I love the jars of coloured pens and neat piles of washi tape. I love the big screened computers with keyboards that look sleek and shiny. It’s beautiful, and something I would really love for myself.

However, and I’m in no way knocking these beautiful images of people’s work spaces, that’s not my reality.

I tried it, it didn’t work.

I read an article that was doing the rounds on Facebook a while back about how a creative person will work best in a crazy environment. And after reading that, not only did I send it to my mother to prove that me having a messy room growing up was actually my way of being creative, but I realised that it’s okay to have a crazy messy desk. In fact, I will most likely thrive like that.

Today is not a post about my beautiful, clean, tidy, and white-spaced desk with pastel quotes stuck around with spotty tape (although looking around, I have them too). It’s a completely 100% honest look at my desk this week. I have done nothing to it. It’s exactly how it was when I thought of doing this. It’s my desk, it’s me, it’s honest.

Are you ready?

Wow. This is what I work in, friends. I’ll have ‘oh my gosh clutter urgh!’ moment and I’ll completely take everything off, clean and tidy and put everything away where it actually belongs. It lasts all of about 2 days. Then it’s back to the piles.

We should have have a competition – how many things can you actually find? Or ISpy?

Apparently desk piles work for me. There are books there too, propping up my computer so it doesn’t overheat, there are hair ties and bobby pins, there are (clean) tissues, and pieces of stray paper with notes scribbled on them. There are Post It notes that are no longer sticking. There are photos, and pens, and (unused) plasters. There are rolls of tape and business cards. There are scissors and piles of ink-stained tack. There are those cute bottles I got at the opshop, next to that birthday card someone got me probably 2 years ago.

It’s a mess. But you know what? It’s my mess. And this is who I am. I’m messy. Organised – I do know where everything is! – but messy. And that’s okay. Not everyone is the same, not everyone is going to work well in mess, nor are they going to work well in spotless environments. And that’s okay.

While I would love to be tidier and have a Pin-worthy desk to share and inspire others with. I don’t. This, my friends, is the completely honest look at my desk. Care to share yours?