Bill H.
I wish you the best. Sometimes the world just sucks through no fault of our own. Don't give up the dream though. As far as essential space, well an inventor just never has enough room for enough stuff. An inventor is not a collector like some people with old boxes of newspapers and magazines and hummel dolls and china figurines and broken lamps and busted furniture. A collection of junk that makes it hard to navigate around a place with any assurance of getting to the bathroom in time.
No sir. What we have is essential things with high possibilities. Things that were once valuable equipment wise. Machinery that can be used for a new purpose, remade into intreauging and fasinating things. We find stuff that can be refashioned into a higher art form. An artist / inventor doesn't have a collection of just junk. We have, maybe not enough room to get around the place, but we have necessary things.
My place, for instance. It's a small apartment that I was forced to move into. Forced by the financial institutions that stole my house after I had paid for it only 1 1/4 times and not the 2 1\2 times required. Here I have an assortment of elderly electronic equipment (vacuum tube things) that I am slowly reconstituting to working condition, some old tape recorders, a few old VCRs, a large screen projection TV that sits by the doorway and will one day become a very large screen ocilloscope and several boxes of chassis components for that in the living room.
My steam stuff is packed away as I can't do experiments using burners and 20 lb tanks of propane in an apartment building. The electronics need to go analog for the invention I am working on. When I am finished that invention will change the world, it won't be the same place afterward. You will be able to go outside and say to yourself; "That S.O.B. did that."
The kitchen table is taken up with the making of a banjo out of a cigar box. That started out simple as such things naturally should be. Then the inventor got involved. Now it is going to be a dual resinator 5 string banjo. It's almost ready to attach the neck to the box. I am sure it will sound nice, the old one did. I can't yet play the banjo though but plan to learn. No room to put any plates on that table.
Bill, essential room means enough room for your stuff. I had to get rid of a lot of neat things when I moved and I really regret it.
But a person "has got to do what they got to do" as the saying goes.
Best of luck.
Bill G.