Like most of you sitting at home for work, personal life, etc., I find myself re-examining a lot about how my house functions (or doesn’t). While I admit I have been tempted to start ordering things online to refresh my daily routine, two things have prevented me from doing that. First, I am committed to supporting local retailers that are suffering so much—while I am mostly resistant to getting out and about. Second, the more I look at what we have in our home, the more I realize that there is a lot of space and things that we are neglecting.
In the 100+ days since the self-isolation began here in Texas, I have noticed quite a few things in the guest-bedroom/home office where I sit now. Old technology that was set aside, CDs, semi-plausible button-down shirts (good enough for Zoom), and even some forgotten musical instruments. The more I sit in it and the quieter things get, the more I realize that—like a space craft barreling towards Mars—that we’ve got to make use of the spaces and equipment we have.
For the past couple of weekends, my wife and I have been purging crap from the garage, which has served as storage for our old business files, quasi-art-studio, and customary functions like workshop and tool storage. We’ve got this idea to turn the garage into a home-gym and ancillary hang-out space but a comment my wife made changed my thinking about the possibilities. She suggested I consider a music room there as well.
Before COVID-19, I practiced with my band weekly and we performed every 4-to-6 weeks, so I not only had a built-in creative outlet… I had a place for all of that stuff to be. Now, not so much. So, I took a good hard look at “my corner” of the garage then started breaking it down… quite literally. I demolished the old workbench and just kept going until I realized that about 3/4 of it was stuff I didn’t use and some of the remainder is aspirational at best.
Once I had it down to a blank space, I really got excited—and a little emotional. Something about the smell of old tools always makes me think of my dad. In any case, I started re-building a creative space just for me from scratch using exclusively things we already had. And there was a lot to work with once I really paid attention. Everything from the hardware to the decor to the electrical aspects were just sort of laying around. And in a weekend I was able to largely convert a messy and non-functional space into something new that brings me joy.
My suggestion is to try this yourself. Start purging things you no longer use, but set aside things you might use if you only had the space. You might be surprised with what inspires you and what delights are waiting just around the corner.