My "Layout Nook"

     In other parts of the world, people have Layout Rooms. Here in San Francisco, we make do as best we can with the space we have. I never complain about my tiny apartment, rather I accept it as the home I have had these past seventeen years, and embrace my limitations of space at the existential level. This is my little part of the world!

      This sunny Saturday morning I cleaned out this odd corner of my tiny kitchen, which has always been a sort of "staging area" for incoming groceries, outgoing recycling, and anything else that I need to set out of the way until I can figure out where to put it. Before any of the clutter could jump back in, I moved in my stock of styrofoam sheets, my previously unseen N scale micro layout "test track," and the baseboard for my current project. And voi la! I now have a layout nook.

     It's a sunny window, and there's an outlet at counter-top height just behind the fridge.  Actually, I don't envision operating in this space, nor do I think I'll do much modeling in here. But it seems right to have a place where work in progress can sit level while I'm not working on it, but don't want to properly put it away. Having it "out" makes it available and inviting. So when I come home and see it sitting there, I can move it to my modeling table (just two feet to my right as I took the picture) and tinker away to my heart's content.