Spring cleaning, either early or late.

Finally Eleya and I are getting our plan on the road for rearranging our house. Now the kids are older, and we don’t have to worry so much about where they are — now it’s usually about why they can’t be quieter wherever that is.

We kicked off The Big Plan this weekend by finally getting rid of a bed we took off a friend’s hands years ago and put in our finished basement to make a somewhat sparse guest room. Suddenly the room looked so spacious, yet filled with the promise of new purpose!

Phase Two had me buying a used music studio desk at a great price from a Craigslist seller who’s a musician, producer, engineer, and business manager in Arlington. Nice guy, by the way. What was a Spartan guest room will soon become a beautifully appointed music studio and work area for me.

Phase Three is to get a small computer desk for our living room/library (not the same as the family room), and move the main computer workstation to that floor. Incidentally, this makes it easier for us to keep an eye on the kids as they use the computer, since our house has a pretty open design on the main floor.

Phase Four is to remove the enormous office desk and (possibly) repaint in the great room in the basement. Our main server — a repurposed secondhand desktop — will stay…

…And reside next to the home theater that is moving in Phase Five from the main floor to the basement great room. We are looking forward to having a warmer family room on the main floor, no longer dominated by a 50? HDTV, instead to be used for (gasp!) actual conversation, reading, and playing games.

We’re not sure how much longer we’re going to be in this house, but we’ve been talking about this kind of rearrangement for the better part of 2007, and the New Year is a great time to resolve to make a more comfortable and useful home space.