Hi everyone! We are back today joining up with a great group of bloggers to share our favorite organized spaces in our homes, and how we keep them that way. Huge thanks to Brenna at Domestic Charm for organizing this series!
My favorite organized space in our home is my home office. This space is my ‘command central’ for both my business and my home. Thanks to the fun pink and black/white decor {inspired by one of my favorite style icons–Kate Spade} this space is also my happy place!
How I organized the space:
I spend most of my working hours in this space, I do everything website-related, run my organizing products business and manage all our family ‘stuff’ from here–it is pretty much ‘command central’ both for my business and our home.
A few years ago I went about creating a home office using inexpensive furniture from IKEA and HomeGoods, I converted the sitting room off our master bedroom into a workspace. I was lucky enough to find the vintage console at a furniture auction, it is one of my favorite pieces of furniture ever. It definitely looks very different from the ‘before, the whole transformation is HERE. It was originally designed to be a dining room buffet but I repurposed it to hold all my office essentials including papers, office supplies, pens and more. It provides a ton of great storage with built-in shelves and drawers, it keeps all my supplies neatly tucked away yet right at hand, just what my office needed.
After painting the piece, I lined the console drawers with colorful shelf paper and added some small storage bins to keep things neatly together. This drawer holds stationery, pencils and file labels.
The other drawer keeps all my small office supplies neatly in one place. I added some pink and some black and white scrapbook paper to the bottom of all the phone and tablet boxes I’d been collecting {see the how-to HERE} so they matched my color scheme. This was essentially FREE drawer organization and now all my office supplies don’t get jumbled up inside the drawers. I store things like wash tape, business cards from contacts, scripture cards and small envelopes in this drawer.
The IKEA wall shelves {I jazzed the brackets up with a little gold spray paint} above the console are mostly for display purposes, I like to surround myself with things that inspire me and have special meaning while I work. The white boxes store cards and photos. I am always tweaking the shelves to display pretty things, like a framed “hello” notecard a friend sent me, these small touches make the room a happier space.
I use large boxes to hold holds files as do the other IKEA organizers on the shelves. I keep business-related files in one large IKEA box, and store gift bags in the one on the other shelf.
Speaking of the other shelf, below you can see the one on the other side of the window. Again, a little gold spray paint made a huge difference in these inexpensive IKEA shelves (buy them here). There isn’t much space between the window and the wall so they allowed me to add vertical storage to maximize the space.
How I keep the space organized:
The white desk where I sit to work came from HomeGoods. I love the simple, clean lines and that it has two small drawers in it for convenient storage for all the small things.
The desk drawers are filled with the things I use daily…notepads {I am a compulsive list-maker, I am sure that doesn’t surprise you!}, labels and stickies for The Calendar Pads, my favorite set pens and notecards.
In the drawers I use small trays that came from The Container Store, they are perfect for holding tiny things like thumbtacks, paper clips and binder clips. This desk came with the greek key lining in the drawers, hello–perfection–but the drawers are very shallow, so these small blue trays fit them perfectly.
I read in Marie Kondo’s book: The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up that once you create a system, if it is a good system, things will stay neat. In this space I am finding that to be true. For as much time as I spend in here, now that everything has a proper place for the most part it all stays in order. It creates a calm, organized space for me to be both creative and productive.
Since I am primarily the only person who uses this space, that also makes it easier to keep organized, I should mention that! I also tend to make a bit of mess all day long–piling up papers, files etc. but I try to always clean it up before I call it quits for the day, that helps me not to feel overwhelmed when I start the next morning.
Now, be sure to hop over to our series hostess, Brenna from Domestic Charm to see her best tips for organizing kid’s closets!
XO,
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