I used to be an obsessive rearranger of furniture. In my bedroom growing up I tried every possible configuration, moving dressers and shelves alone by bracing my back against them and pushing against the walls with my feet. I somehow avoided serious injury or destruction of property.

Nowadays, I rarely rearrange, largely because so few of our rooms would work any other way. One exception is the office. It is a hodgepodge of random secondhand furniture and must accommodate so many odd items: three sets of file drawers, fabric and yarn and thread, sewing machine, computer, two desks, printer, scads of books, and an ever-changing assortment of boxes and bags with nowhere else to go. In short, it’s often (usually?) a disaster.

As is fairly common this time of year for me, I got the organizing bug this week. “Something simply must be done about all this fabric,” I said to myself. And this yarn and the patterns and the stacks of papers and all these quilting books (thanks a lot to my enabling mother-in-law). So I jumped online to see what Ikea or Target or Home Depot might have to offer. And I didn’t like it. I didn’t like that someone thought that particle board and laminate should cost more than $50 (sometimes as much as $500!). I didn’t like that nothing was real. I didn’t like that I wouldn’t see it in person before committing to it.

So instead I took my prize money for my short story award and headed down to a secondhand furniture store in town called April’s Antiques. I think I’ve only been in there twice and both times I’ve left with furniture! It’s where I bought our awesome mid-century modern dresser and night stands a couple years ago (for a song).

I wasn’t disappointed. I found a lovely, large, real wood shelving unit with cabinets at the bottom for just over one hundred bucks. On Wednesday my new shelving unit will be delivered and I shall fill it with books and patterns and fabric and yarn galore. And I’ll be sure to take a picture.

And now I must make way for my lovely new shelves.