Day: November 1, 2010

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Finally Feels Like a Home Office!

Wow, the new printing, filing, and shredding centre in my study is awesome! I spent a few hours tonight catching up on… printing, filing, and shredding. 🙂 The printer does not have wireless networking capabilities, so I bought an 11′ long cable to run across the room. I would have thought that would be more than enough, but I was a bit short, so I pulled out a USB extension cable I had lying around and that gave me just enough length.

So, I now have a printer cable running across the room? You’d just about never know it since I ran it under the mattress base, and it comes up just behind the desk. Once I find some clips for securing the printer to the top of the night table, it will be permanently set up for the first time since I moved into Miranda. Finally! I do have to get up and walk all of two steps to turn it on (or I guess I could roll the chair three feet…) since the printer is a power hog and can’t be left on. Big deal! It and the shredder are sharing the outlet by the electrical panel.

Today’s changes have made Miranda feel like a whole new rig and I am very pleased with my day’s work!

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A Filing Cabinet

One of my biggest decluttering challenges was to go from six overflowing filing cabinet drawers to just one. I moved into Miranda with a plastic bin of files. That worked reasonably well until I started to have to keep more accounting and business records and needed a more accessible system with room to grow. It was time for a proper filing cabinet.

I could have bought a cheap and ugly two-drawer metal one, but I really wanted a wood-finish lateral unit as it would look more like furniture. The top drawer could be for files and the bottom for office supplies. Staples was the only store to have what I wanted, but at $300 and with the wrong wood grain, there was no way I was proceeding with my idea!

When the beyond perfect thing showed up on Kijiji, I knew I had to have it even if it meant a drive to Penticton. It was advertised at $55 and I got it for $45:

It matches my new desk! Their dimensions are so close, also, that the room room really feels balanced now.

The drawer on top is the night table for which I have yet to find a permanent home. I think it’ll stay there, stuffed with printer paper, with the printer on top. Best place I’ve found for it so far.

One of the things I really like about this filing cabinet is that there are rails that let me fit files in horizontally, so that I can have them facing me. I can put personal files on one side and business files on the other:

The drawers glide beautifully and silently. For particle board furniture, it is of excellent quality.

Donna deserves another thank you for helping me haul it out of the car and into the rig!

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Fixing Holes in RV Walls

RV walls are made of thin paneling. You would think that fixing those holes would be a lot of work, right? That it’d involve filling the hole, patching, plastering, and sanding, right?

hole from ugly light fixture (and the green paint!)

Nope!

Here is how to fix a hole in an RV wall in just one step! One!

you’d never know there was a hole here!

Of course, this works best when the hole is at a convenient height to put a picture. 😀

A couple of days ago, I found myself staring at two holes on either side of the big picture window in the rear after removing the ugly light fixtures. I didn’t have any suitable art with which to cover them up and I wanted a matching pair of pictures.

So, I did something I’ve never done and actually went out searching for the perfect thing to cover those holes. I’ve always acquired art on a whim and made it work within my home. These pieces had to fit my decorating scheme and have some personal significance. After trying several stores and looking at pieces that cost more than $100, I found this butterfly and a matching dragonfly at a dollar store of all places, for $2 a piece! The colours are perfect; the frames are nicely distressed; and insects remind me of a major crossroad moment in my life.

The paint job is a mitigated disaster. I really would have needed a third coat (!). I’m just going to put everything into place and scrap every last drop out of that can to touch up the really obvious bad spots. But the colour is so lovely and rich that I’d rather have a bad paint job in here than those ugly white and sage walls.