Milking Squirrels: Thrifting My Own House

Eight years ago, I closed up my home-based business, gave away my desk, bought a pull-out sofa bed, and turned my home office into a den/guest room for when my adult children visit from out of state.

I don't miss my home-business, and I love that we have this place in our home where our family can be comfortable and feel welcome.

The only problem has been that over the eight years since I closed up my business, I have found that I've spent some time working remotely for other people, and so, while I never missed the home office, I did miss having a specific place, at home, where I could do my job.

In addition to the contract work I am doing these days for Relay Publishing, I also work from home at least one day per week for my full-time employer, and so having a place - other than my kitchen table - to do my work has been something I've been trying to set up for a while now.

Deus Ex Machina and I have discussed a number of different options.

The first option was to purchase a laptop sofa desk, which I did. It looks something like this one.

My laptop fits on the table, but if wanted to use a mouse (which I needed for at least one of the jobs I did as a freelancer during COVID) or take notes, the desk wasn't big enough.

I started looking at all sorts of other options from a rolltop desk to adding a hinged shelf to one of our book shelves for a DIY secretary desk. Nothing really seemed to be the right answer. All of the choices would require that we move things around, which wasn't necessarily a bad thing, but we would also need to giveaway or sell some of the pieces of furniture we have, because there wasn't really room for more.

Then, we started working on a different room. We painted the ceiling black and found the perfect new-to-us sofa on FB Marketplace - and they delivered! The new couch was twice the size of our old loveseat, and the room, suddenly, became much smaller.

Compound that with the fact that we have a lot of shoes, and no place to really put them, which was a problem, because the larger couch takes up more floor space, which means, we were tripping on all of the shoes.

I decided to give away the beautiful, solid wood Spanish Colonial armoire we'd purchased over two decades previously. It was actually one of the first pieces of furniture that we bought, and it's definitely one of the nicer pieces we own.

But it's really large and bulky, and it just didn't fit the space anymore, and I couldn't imagine where else in our house it might go. So, I listed it on my local Buy Nothing group.

I received an almost immediate response.

And then, I spent several days reaching out to giftee to reschedule, when he no-showed, yet again, until finally, he said he wasn't interested afterall. "It won't fit in my car."

Umm ... ? The measurements were in the original post. Whatever.

As it turns out, the guy did me a huge favor. Out of curiosity, I looked it up, and new, this cabinet retails for over $1000.

But that's not why, I ultimately, decided to keep it.

As I mentioned, I've been looking for a desk so that I can set up a home office, because I work from home at least one day a week, but I don't want a regular desk, because we wanted something that would close up and keep the work stuff contained, especially when family visits.

I bought shoe cubbies, and I raided my tool cabinet for some hooks for coats. We have a new entry way.

After we shuffled some furniture around, relocated a piece or two to other rooms, and cleaned out a filing cabinet we hadn't opened in five years (and which still had receipts and invoices from my closed business dating back a decade and a half), Deus Ex Machina and Precious moved the armoire into the den/guest room.

I'll add some lighting, install a pull out shelf for the desk, and get a bar-height office chair, and I'll be all set.

My new "desk" cost nothing.

And I didn't have to giveaway one of the prettiest piece of furniture we own.