During the week that I took off from work in May, one of my goals was to get some smaller tasks done that kept getting pushed aside. The office was one of those tasks. I had a ton of stuff sitting on the couch in my office as well as items from the two planner conferences that needed to be gone through. I also had stuff just hanging out in the middle of the room that needed to be dealt with.
(Click on the photos to see larger)
The task itself was easy enough but as usual doing one thing inevitably leads to organizing another area. I may not have been so thorough if I were doing this on a weekend but since I had a lot of time I decided to tackle more. This is not a total refresh of my office. This is really just putting stuff where it belongs! I am happy with the design of my office for the most part. I do have a couple of future projects planned-painting the storage dresser and getting rid of the filing cabinet. I will also do another clean out of the guest room closet.
It has been a goal of mine to keep the couch cleared off and available for sitting or laying down. When one thing gets placed on it, the “stuff” just seems to grow!
My desk seems to grow stacks of papers. What I need is a place for everything and a place for pending things.
The couch wasn’t messy per se but there were bags and purses that needed to be put away. My work office moved and I will not have a desk at the new office so a few of these bags had items that were from my work office. Many of these items ended up in the donation pile.
This huge box sitting near the filing cabinet is a “portable” desk riser that my work gave me. You put it on top of your desk and it allows you to either sit or stand while working. And somehow, items just accumulate on top of the box! How does that happen??!!? I’m not ready to use the riser but I needed to put it somewhere. The box is huge so I took the riser out of the box and stored it on the side of my desk to keep it out of the way. Just getting that box out of the way instantly made things better!
Next came time to put away all of the swag from the 2 planner conferences I had gone to-Go Wild and West Coast Planners. I had bags and bags of supplies including pens, highlighters, stickers, planners, bottles, keychains, ephemera, die cuts and more!
I pulled things (everything) out of the cart while sitting in my office chair. For a while I felt closed in by my stuff!!
Ultimately, everything found a home and was the room was livable again!
I also use this room for my workouts so it’s important that I have enough space for my workouts.
This room is also one where I desire less visual clutter and more functional storage. One plan is that I will use the dresser (green drawers) as storage to house my tools, paint supplies, DIY and craft items which are currently housed in the filing cabinet. Only 1 drawer in the filing cabinet has typical filing cabinet stuff but half of the drawer has different papers (regular, sticker, cardstock) for the printer.
At this point, I plan to have a portable box for my paperwork that I can put in the closet. I’ll find another space for the various papers and I’ll need to figure out where to house the printer which I still use.
This was one of those clean outs that has a positive impact in a space where I spend a great deal of time. Even though it took more time than I anticipated, the payout was great!
Stay tuned for future projects in the office/guest room!
BEFORE
AFTER
