Our story so far: Having moved into the old Methodist church we had renovated into a residence, we now were working on making it a cozy home.

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I began establishing cozy in my office. Guests wouldn’t be using this space, but I would—every day.

In our previous house, my office occupied the smallest bedroom. It was usually filled to the top with paper of all sorts—books, magazines, files, notebook paper, printing paper, loose papers, mail, greeting cards I treasured, greeting cards to send and stationery … I was a papyrophiliac. And it drove Tyler just a little bit crazy. He successfully encouraged me to upgrade from newsprint to digital editions of my favorite newspapers (yes, I subscribed to two), but I still adored paper anything and hesitated to let it go.

When we moved out of that house, I trashed and shredded a literal ton of paper. The experience was freeing. I felt so much lighter in a physical sense and a spiritual one, too, but I getting rid of a lot of paper didn’t mean I wanted to get rid of all paper.

I stored some of that treasured paper (books, primarily) and lugged around the rest of it in the RV we lived in for nearly a year. My desk in the RV was a corner desk—literally a triangle that had enough space for my computer and a pen caddy. It was difficult working that way, and when we finally moved into the church I got grumpy having to unpack and put together other rooms before doing my office. I longed to have my own paper-centric space back.

We chose the back corner of the second floor for my office because most of the time, no one but me would ever see it (paper piles everywhere—how fun!). My nook had a window overlooking the elementary school playground across the street. The sound of children’s voices made me happy and reminded me of how the window in my old office overlooked the basketball court in our former neighbor’s driveway where children frequently spent time throwing baskets.

When I finally had time to assemble my desk, the hardest part was finding all the parts. My desk was actually two desks made of sheets of glass and a whole lot of metal tubing. At first I feared I was missing some of the legs but a little digging revealed the missing parts in the closet—maybe the movers stashed them there, or maybe I did and I forgot. So many moving parts.

I spent the day with an Allen wrench and successfully reassembled both desks and they fit in a perfect L-shape in the corner. When my mom visited, we unpacked a dozen boxes labeled “office supplies” into the eaves behind my desk, and ta da, I had a real office again with a real desk and plenty of room to pile up paper. I was in heaven. Well, if not heaven, I was enjoying the rarefied air of the second story of an old church, and that was just fine.

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Today’s headline is a quote credited to genius physicist Albert Einstein.

Tomorrow: Where will the books go? Read about it here.