Things Cheap People Life: Part Whatever

When I was a young lad in my sleepy little Nova Scotian fishing village,* I dreamed of two things: living in Pine Valley, Pennsylvania, and having my very own home office. Since ABC cancelled All My Children, I've turned to the second in hopes of not failing all of little Doug's future aspirations. I also learned that Pine Valley was not a real place. Imagine my surprise after spending weeks scouring the suburbs of Philadelphia for it.

Marco is probably reading this and thinking We already have a home office. Well, not so much thinking it as actually saying it, and shaking his head disapprovingly. But Marco, I say, it's your office, not mine, and there's far too much stimulation there. Like bookshelves and clean floors and comfort. That's why I decided to make the basement my home office.

Nevertheless, having a home office and living in Pine Valley were not my only two childhood dreams. The other? To never spend money on anything.** So does one reconcile these two desires, you ask. Home offices are expensive, and having a second is superfluous. Well, I respond, it's easy when you have a basement and a little bit of ingenuity.

May I present: The Basement.

Creepy, you think. And you're right. It's not one of those fancy finished basements with things like pool tables and floors and convenient electrical outlets. But it'll do.

First, clear out a space. Except for piles like this:

I tried moving this last spring, but something hissed at me. Live and let live, and throw out the old scales.

Find your self an electrical source. For me, this was an outlet clear on the other side of the basement. If that's your case, get a long extension cord. Rather than leave it on the floor, tack it to the ceiling. Literally.

In any office, the center piece has to be the desk, because that's where you'll do most of your work (well, not really. I've almost always been adverse to using desks, especially since The Incident in Grade 5. But that's another post).

This is a desk that Marco bought when we first moved to Columbus and didn't have any money. After we got money, we bought a desk at Ikea, and this one has been in the basement(s) since. When we moved, I lost the screws that hold it together, so it's very unstable. But it holds things, right? When setting up this home office, I was going to buy cork-board for notes and stuff, but that shit is expensive. I was just going to tape some flattened moving boxes to the wall and use that, but scissors are complicated. So I thumb-tacked things to the steps. Now I can reorganize things according to importance, due dates, or how I felt when I woke up that morning. Which is not often in a good mood, mind you. And as an added bonus, the stairs also serve as modern looking bookshelves.

So, how does one keep track of things?

The Calendar

I found this at Target for $5, and stuck it to the back of a box. I wanted to hang it somewhere, but seeing as how there's all concrete walls down here, I managed to find a wire sticking out of the ceiling. A clip, and voila! My very own hanging calendar, which I'm hoping the heating duct (directly behind it) does not catch it on fire. Fingers crossed.

There was no cheap way out of a chair, so I marched myself over to Wal-Mart and sprang $49 on one. That hurt. And for taking notes and jotting down things, which often times involves me pacing back and forth, talking to myself like a crazy person...

White Board

I already have a white board, but I wanted a bigger one. Taking notes on a white board often involves me taking pictures of said notes before erasing them, storing them on my computer and never looking at them again, much like photos of family get-togethers. So I needed to keep it fresh, keep it real... I needed a bigger whiteboard. But that's rather pricey, so I went for the next best thing. Plastic. Since I'm using dry-erase markers, I figured that if I bought a sheet of plastic and stapled it to the wall, it would work just fine. I marched myself over to Joann Fabrics with a dry erase marker in hand, and wrote on at least 7 bolts of fabric and plastic until I found the one that would readily erase. And then I wrote on 4 more because it was kind of fun. And then they kicked me out.

Staple it to the wall, staple a board to the bottom so it stays in place, and suddenly, for just $10.75, you have a 75 inch by 50 inch white board. Nifty, eh? If you don't have white walls, I probably wouldn't bother, because who really wants a brown board? Ridiculous.

Not I'm free to pace to my heart's content. And write, and all it cost was $60.

The basement home office - built yours today!

Oh, and Marco? Suck it.

*Neither of these statements are true. My town was miles from the ocean, and my sex wasn't able to be determined until age 13.

**My allowance was $1 a week until I was ten, and then I stopped getting an allowance at all. I used to spend it on chocolate bars. So this not only explains why I'm cheap, but also why I'm fat.