designing a home office: the before times…

Like so many others, I have been working from home for the last 11 months. Before the pandemic, I had a very simple home office arrangement - a small desk, a chair, and a rug. I never planned on actually using the space for anything other than junk storage and a place to house an old laptop.

For reasons I can’t really recall, I had painted the walls a baby pink. I’d been aiming for millennial pink - something pretty and feminine. What I ended up with was the color of melted strawberry ice cream. I shouldn’t have been surprised - that was actually the name of the color! Benjamin Moore Melted Ice Cream.

The desk was a simple black top with gold legs from World Market.

The rug and chair were, well, also from World Market.

This seems to be out of stock, as is the rug…

Taking up easily a quarter of the space in the room was this old gem, a pine armoire purchased 20 years ago at Pier 1. Not at all my style anymore, but surprisingly functional. Holds sewing, knitting, old paperwork, random scrapbooks from high school, etc.

This is actually the one! Our first grown up piece of furniture. And by grown up, I mean our first piece of furniture that didn’t require us to assemble it.

With that, I called it quits on decorating the office. I didn’t have any use for the space other than holding junk in the armoire. I closed the door on the room and assumed I’d never go back inside unless I needed to sew a button on something or was looking to clean out the old scrapbooks.

And then, the pandemic hit…