Operation Home Organization: The Office

I’m still busy organizing things around our house and am enjoying doing so. Crazy?  Maybe. But that works for me!  😉 How about you?  Does January give you feeling of wanting to organize?

I’m not stressing about it too much, I’m just tackling things as I feel like it.  No schedule, just doing stuff as I see it.  This helps me not to get overwhelmed by everything that needs to get done (and there’s a lot!).  But I am trying to make sure that I tackle things room by room.  That way I don’t have a million different things getting done, with nothing looking like anything is organized!

The last room I organized was my kitchen, and I just recently finished our office space.   Our office is at the centre of our home and used practically as much as our kitchen!  So it needs to be clean and organized, or it gets crazy messy very fast!

Here’s how our office looks now:

It’s just a simple space that serves as many things for us. You may remember from this post, that for the better part of last year this room actually was our middle son’s bedroom (we tried putting our 2 boys in one room too early on, and it didn’t work out very well).

Now it’s back to it’s proper use:  our home office.  Whew.

It’s where I blog.  I used to have my laptop out in the main living area, but I found myself constantly looking at my e-mail and all that social media stuff that sucks you in!  So I moved my laptop back into the office where it belongs!

On a side note, I bought this old dictionary with the intent of making a paper wreath, but I didn’t have the heart to rip the pages out.  When I opened this book up, old notes from the previous owner fell out, and I just couldn’t tear apart a book that seemed to have so much history in it.  So now it’s my mousepad.  And it works quite well…I love it!  🙂

Our office is also a quiet place for reading and doing homework.

Aside from being useful, I also wanted this room to look pretty.  You can see it from so many spots in the house so it needs to look nice.  This room is also very dark, as it does’t get any sun, and the walls are painted a chocolate brown.  But the darkness of it makes the room cozy, and it makes for a fantastic backdrop for family pictures in chunky white frames.  I love this feature wall.  The pictures really pop here!

Our office also serves a guest bedroom.  Adding a set of curtains inside the room creates instant privacy.
It’s such a simple solution to not having a proper guest room.

I also decided to get a little fancy with our filing cabinet and gave it a 20 minute makeover.  I’ve always wanted to wallpaper the front of the cabinet, and I finally did so!  This was a hand-me-down piece so it was pretty banged up when we got it and that always bothered me!  So I just covered the front drawers with some wallpaper that I Mod Podged on and now it looks fabulous!  I tell you that roll of wallpaper that I bought for $40 a couple of years ago has served me well!  I’ve used it to line the shelves of my craft cabinet, I’ve used it to make my pantry storage jars and coffee canister look nice, and now I’ve used it again in the office!  Thrifty & fab!

Now here’s a little more on the organization part of my office…this room tends to be a dumping ground for paper so I had to make sure things were organized!

Our office space is also where I store all of the pictures, paintings, and important papers that the kids bring home from school.  I bought these cardboard storage boxes from Ikea, and use one for each kid.  Every once in a while I go through them and toss things that aren’t necessary.

Then it was time to get all of our paperwork organized! For all my paper organization I use the Martha Stewart line of supplies at Staples.  Pretty & effective! So I got to work and put together 2 household binders: 1 for blog, meal and family activity planning, and 1 that is our Family Binder which contains our important phone numbers, dates and personal information.

All the stuff that makes me the CEO of our family! But more on that later…I think I’m going to put together a separate post with all the details on these binders.

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So far I’ve made pretty good progress on this space.  Now if it could just look like one of those offices you see on Better Homes & Gardens!  Some day.  Some day.

Have an inspired day!