Totally overwhelmed...

Ever felt so totally overwhelmed that you just don't know where to begin? how to start? how to even make a plan of action?

Let me introduce you to my lounge-cum-craftroom - living alone I can get away with spreading out a little and letting my hobby kinda take over a corner of the lounge... but its gotten rather out of hand.


This is my desk - my fella and I custom-built it a few years back, to fit perfectly between the window and an existing bookcase which couldn't be moved. Trouble is, we got a little carried away with our measurements and mis-read the marks we'd made on the wall, consequently the desk is about 2 inches too high to sit at comfortably. So I sourced an office chair and a footrest from Freecycle and with the chair at its highest point and my feet on the footrest it seemed to work... but not really totally suitable... but it seemed too much effort to take everything off the desk and re-site it, especially as the little cubby on the right of the picture houses my modem, and I need to be able to get my hand in there to re-set it...

So, altho the desk got used quite a bit, it also became a bit of an "administrative dumping ground" and it got to the stage where I needed to set up a folding camping table to be able to work... trouble is, it's only a small table and very soon it because rather full. (Having said that, the only reason the project life box and ink pads, as well as the pile of envelopes are on there, is because I had to move them to get to the modem when my internet went down earlier - honest!)

The camping table has the opposite problem to the desk, in that its a little too low and I can't quite get my knees under it... might have something to do with the pile of pizza boxes stacked up under it containing half of my cardstock and paper stash...

So my friend Tim (who I swear closes his eyes and shudders each time he comes into my lounge) has decided to take matters into his own hands and re-site my desk to the correct height - and last night we were discussing the best way to utilise my lounge as a craft room - he's suggesting cutting this Ikea Billy bookcase in half and mounting it a bit higher on the wall, and then extending the desk to go across underneath it as well as making it considerably deeper - the bottom 2 shelves of the Billy house photo albums which can be re-homed elsewhere so that's not a problem.

The pizza boxes will have to go somewhere, so he's turned himself 90 degrees to the right and looked at the wall of mis-matched shelves and units... and decreed that they will all come out and he'll put two custom-built shelves which will be deep enough to take my growing collection of thin 12x12 plastic boxes (y'know, the ones you get at Ally Pally 3 for £10...) as well as everything else currently there...

I have 3 more bookshelves in the lounge currently behind the sofa, and they will also be cut in half and mounted above these new shelves to form purpose-built storage - utilising what I already have to its best advantage.

Trouble is, there's currently an awful lot of stuff on these shelves and units - in fact there's an awful lot of stuff everywhere - he wants to start by lowering my current desk whilst I'm away on me hols in a few weeks time, which means I have to clear the top of the desk, and everything that's precariously balanced on the chair, as well as moving the "carrier bag holding pen" that's sprung up underneath the chair and into the corner under the desk (where the woefully inadequate powerpoints are)... so you can see why I have a problem - and why I'm so overwhelmed!

Suggestions please - however the first person to recommend a skip (or a number of skips) gets royally slapped...