The curates house the parish generously provides as part of my wife's employment is very nice. I think it may have been adapted to work better as a clergy house - and therefore a venue for various small events and groups.
It has 3 bedrooms which means we have one and so does each of our daughters.
The elongated lounge allow us to use the back half as a lounge and the front half as a dining area. With a folding down dining table this allows my wife to expand the lounge area to accommodate larger groups.
The kitchen is modern and fine but not large.
The room downstairs that was previously used as a dining room I or my daughters now use as a snug with a TV when the lounge is in use for church events.
And my wife has a separate study.
All of this is - I understand - fairly normal for a curates house. But it does mean I haven't got a desk or something like it that I can do work from which involves paperwork or books.
So the solution I've gone for is to adapt some free standing wider shelving we already had to act as a standing desk. The top shelf takes a laptop so the top of its screen is at standing eye level and there is some space for documents alongside. The shelf below that has a keyboard at a level its comfortable to use. Below there are other shelves with various books and paperwork.
So that is how I've managed to create a space to work from at home. And its much better on my spine than haunching and twisting over a laptop on my lap whilst sitting on the sofa with paperwork scattered around me.
If you didn't know it diocese have various guidelines for clergy
housing. These normally suggest its a good idea if there is a room downstairs in the house
where the Rev can meet people.
Often
this will have to double as their study as well and the advice is it should be
accessible from the hallway off which there should preferably also be a WC
(This is all to avoid visitors having to walk through family rooms).
Curates accommodation, and indeed that for
vicars, may or may not actually meet these guidelines.
When my wife was a curate she was fortunate
to be provided with a house that had a room
she could use as her study and a separate front room that could be used for
visitors (and when not in use was a useful 2nd lounge with a 2nd TV/computer).
I say all this because what this practically often means for you - the Rev's other half - is that you're not going to get your own study/desk area. When we were in a curates house I got round this by having a standing desk in the lounge. And in the current vicarage there is a spare bedroom I can use as my study - as long as our daughters aren't home. But when they move back having completed uni (not a certain future but fairly probable) it maybe that the spare bedroom isn't spare any more.
All of this is probably a long winded way of saying that a standing desk is probably your best bet if you want some sort of area in the house where you can keep stuff on a desk (or something like it).
