A Changed Workspace (again)

About two weeks ago, our basement flooded. It has been like a monsoon, and our sump pump failed. Water pooled in two unfinished closets before finally seeping up through the floorboards. A water mitigation company determined that the floor was not salvageable and tore the entire thing out.

Both of my older kids sleep in the basement. The 11-year-old has his own room, and the 9-year-old sleeps in the large playroom with room dividers to section off his own space.

I knew instinctively that there would be no “quick fix.” I have heard that any company that does home improvement projects is booked out. Being stuck at home due to Covid… lots of people decided to do home updates. So the immediate question became: what do we do with the kids?

The daybed in my office pulls out into a king-sized bed… juuuuuust barely fitting into the room with my desk. I thought that we could put both of the kids onto this bed together. Then immediately thought better of the idea.

If I let the kids sleep in my office, there would be stuff everywhere. And no room to walk. I’d have to look at an unmade bed overrun with their stuffed animals every day.

I decided that it would be better to let them move into the master bedroom. I would sleep in my office, and my husband would sleep in his office (which also has a daybed). The kids could bring all of their favorite things up from the basement and turn the master into their own dedicated space for what will likely be 4–6 weeks.

This isn’t the first time that we’ve completely repurposed rooms in the past year. In fact, it is the third time.

In the Fall, when my kids were home 100% of the time for remote learning, we turned our living room into a classroom. We quickly realized that when they did schoolwork from their rooms, not a lot got done. Even though I couldn’t look over their shoulders every minute, having them centrally located in the house made it much easier. We used room dividers to section off part of the living room and moved their desks into the space. It stayed that way until they returned to the classroom full-time in April.

Then in February, when I was on the verge of a breakdown, my parents came to help. They came one at a time to stretch out the amount of help they could provide; first my mom, then my dad, for a total of nearly six weeks. Knowing that it was going to be long-term, I moved out of my office and set up my desk in the master bedroom. This way, our houseguest could have a dedicated space while with us.

So we are no stranger to “making it work” — nor do we have any qualms about moving furniture around. I have people lined up to do the work needed in our basement, but it is going to take time. I’m not particularly fond of sleeping on the small daybed in my office, but it’s fine. My clothes are crammed into a tiny dresser so that I don’t have to keep retrieving them from my closet upstairs. I don’t like the feeling of “everything around me” while I work, but I try to block it out.

We set up a tent in the backyard for what I thought was going to be a single night of “backyard camping” back around the fourth of July, but my older son has taken to sleeping out there almost every night. He says that he enjoys the peace and quiet away from his brother.

Yet other than sleeping outside, the two kids have completely taken over the master bedroom. I have found apple cores on the nightstand. They brought up a bunch of books and are storing them under the bed as a “library.” They brought up one of their Alexa devices so that they can listen to audiobooks while playing games on the bed (and leave pieces strewn about the floor).

I can’t wait to get settled back into our space (and really — it will be a “new” space by the time the basement is finished). But for now, I can take some comfort in knowing that it won’t be forever.