Originally published 03. 07. 2014
I don’t know about you, but I love to peek behind the scenes, and I especially love to look at other people’s work spaces. I find it really fascinating, in the same way that I loved seeing inside other people’s houses when we were house hunting. (Does anyone else randomly trawl estate agents websites…)
So I thought you might like to take a peak at where all the magic happens at Hoobynoo World. Some of you will know that the business is run from our home, we are a classic ‘kitchen table’ business, and when I started I did literally pack the orders on our dining room table:
with a little help from my then baby girl.
It didn’t take long for me to out grow the dining room table, luckily
for me when we bought our house, it had a garage. We are not garage
people, our car is just fine outside, it doesn’t need its own room to
sleep in, and it was the kind of space that would have ended up crammed
with stuff we would never use.Pretty much as soon as we moved in we got
my dad (who happens to be in the building trade) to convert it for us at
family rates
So once I’d outgrown the dining room, I moved my operation into the
office, seemed like a sensible choice, I set myself up a little table at
the back of the room.
I should point out that I also share the office with my husband who
is a children’s’ author, as well as all of our ‘clutter’ and DVD and
book collection which probably takes up most of the space. Thanks to
Dad, we had plenty of built-in storage.
So after moving onto my little table in the office, it wasn’t long
before some of the books and DVD’s had to take a little trip down to the
charity shop to make way for my packing materials and stock!
I carried on quite happily like this for about oooh 6 months or so, then things got quite a lot busier, especially with NotontheHighStreet.com…
and David started to help me with packing the orders so I could get on
with more of the admin, drawing new characters, coming up with new ideas
etc.
So being the generous soul I am, I found an old table and set it up for
him in the window so he could get lots of lovely daylight. He gets a bit
grumpy otherwise.. I would like to point out that my packing table (now
a dumping ground) had been at the back of the room facing a cupboard!)
I don’t know how many of you know writers, or have heard the rumors, but yes, he does spend a lot of time in his dressing gown. David started helping me in January 2014 and I couldn’t manage without him now. But things were still getting busier so it was definitely time for an overhaul. I decided a big tidy up and re-organisation was in order and enlisted the help of my super tidy, super organised friend to help me tackle it one sunday.
it was really quite disorganised, and I really do hate working in a mess. So we worked some magic and this is how it looks today..
Spare ink, gift boxes, and other bits and pieces in this corner next
to our lovely A3 printer. (The shirtless guy is Zac Efron by the way….
in case you were wondering)
My very organised desk and beautiful Mac, one of the first purchases I was able to make, thanks to the business. As you can tell I quite like my stationary and like my desk to look pretty
This is David’s desk – yes I tidied it for him, it doesn’t normally look like this
And this is where I keep all the packing materials (now next to Davids
desk) and all the stock, in pretty storage boxes. (yes, that is another
picture of Zac Efron with his shirt off, what can I say he’s a fine specimen of a man)
And that’s it, that’s my space where I come to work every day.
What’s your space like?
