Happy Wednesday! It is another 2 post day!! I’m excited to be sharing the cover of and some information about Saving Savannah by Patti Callahan so be sure to check that out as well. I am also super excited to be sharing my desk today! It’s Let’s Look with Shay and Erika.

This month we are taking a look at desks. This is the perfect time to be checking out everyone’s desk because I am feverishly creating some desk spaces in my house. We are going back to school 100% virtually for the beginning of the year and we need 3-4 good workspaces in our house. I need one, each kid needs one, and Jeff will need one for at least one day a week to start the school year. I’ve been to Ikea twice in the past week and done countless hours searching Pinterest, asking everyone I know for pictures of their desk/storage spaces, and talked about it so much that I’ve even annoyed myself with the topic. 😂. I’m pretty sure everyone else in America is thinking about this because the desks I’ve liked have either been $1 million or backordered until September.

Our main desk is in our living room. I call it the Triple L room – living room, Lego room, library. I am working hard to transition it to the mostly library but it is a big work in progress, as you will see. Here we go…

I love every single moment that I sit in this chair and work at this desk!! It was my grandfather’s and it was the one thing I really, really wanted from their house. I love it so much! My sister and I had the very best time in that chair when we were little. My grandfather did not love us playing in it because we would spin it around and around for hours. Spinning it would change the height, which we thought was fabulous but he did not. We never really got in trouble playing on it, but we definitely knew we weren’t supposed to. I’m sure Annie is reading this right now thinking the exact same thing.

The desk is in great shape and there are some things in the drawers that make me smile every time I open them up. My grandfather left a few miscellaneous things in the desk (stamps, etc.) that have his handwriting on them and I can’t bring myself to take them out or use them. They stay there and make me smile. The chair is super comfortable. It spins, rolls, and rocks (see why we thought it was so fun???). It is basically the perfect set up for me.

I keep my work laptop on the desk because that is where I’ve been doing most of my work. During non-COVID times our home laptop stays there and my school laptop stays at work or in my school book bag. The books at the back are books that I am reading for school or brought home from our school library to read with the kids or on my own this summer.

Let’s go through what’s on the desk. To the right I have 3 page a day calendars. I know that seems excessive, but each has a purpose. I bought the one on the left as a replacement for the one on the right. It is sassy and makes me giggle every day. It was on my desk at work but I brought it home when school closed in March. The middle one is a travel calendar. My kids and I are so curious about going and seeing new places in the world that I thought it would be the perfect calendar for 2020. Haha, jokes on me. It’s the only way we can go and see anywhere these days. The calendar on the right was also at school and I thought it would be funny and encouraging, but it is actually kinda lame. I didn’t want to throw it away and couldn’t return it so I used it.

All the way on the right I have my teacher planner and my life planner. I like to keep both out so I can keep track of everything I’m doing for back to school and make sure it all works with everything we have going on as a family. I love both of the covers I picked. The boys made clay creations in art and they are on the desk too. The Pinehurst, NC mug holds some pens and pencils regularly and then the pineapple wine glass holds my favorite teacher pens/pencils.

Ok, so in a perfect world that is what my desk looks like. However, I am not living in a perfect world. We had a leak causing us to have our whole house repiped in March. We decided not to fix any of the holes or drywall because we are planning to put an addition on the house that would require the kitchen, where most of the damage is, to be repainted. It felt silly to pay to have it done twice. Well, that was 5 months ago and I still have kitchen cabinets in my living room. So this is what my desk really looks like most days.

Same items plus a stack of School Library Journal magazines for ordering, notes from a recent webinar about online teaching, my to do list clipboard, and the Iceland page from our travel calendar. We had a trip to Iceland planned for my 40th birthday world tour that has been canceled.

Oh and around the desk, chaos!

Next to the desk, my school backpack and a big bag of books I’ve been reading to get ready for 2020-2021 school year.

On the other side of the desk, a kitchen cabinet. Isn’t that where you keep your kitchen cabinets??? That’s my bag of pool membership stuff. I keep it there because at this point, why not??
Doesn’t that chair look perfect for a grandfather? It’s formal and stately, and I can see my Grandaddy sitting in it every time I look at it. 😍

These boxes were behind the chair in the last picture. They are the first part of my library shelves. They’ll go along the wall you can see here. I’ll have to move kitchen cabinet number 2 before we can put them up. That brown bookshelf will move along with the desk to our new office, post addition.
I’m a librarian and it pains me to see my shelves with sideways books and books behind books. That bookshelf is SO FULL, but the books will be perfect in our new library. All I need is an Allen wrench and some patience to build the beautiful Ikea shelves! I think I’ll get to it today.

I’m going to leave you with this picture because I’d hate for you to stop reading with the last picture in your head. We are hoping to start construction on the addition in early September, but who knows. I will be thrilled if we are living in the addition for Thanksgiving break. 🤞🏽

In the next few weeks, I am looking to work on our guest room to put a double workspace in there for one kid and Jeff to work. I think that there will be one Parsons working at our dining room table or kitchen counter throughout the fall, but we’ll see. Having dedicated workspaces will hopefully make everyone’s transition to virtual school a little easier.

I can’t wait to see what everyone else’s desks look like so I can get to work on our spaces. Have a great day full of sunshine and books!