Area #25: Office & Storage Cupboards

 You know the saying, "Saving the best for last."  Well, I saved the worst for last.  I knew from the beginning that the office and storage cupboards would take the most time to organize.  It's been fun going through everything, it has just taken a lot longer than I even anticipated.  This was another area where things just got stashed when we moved in and never gotten back to. I'll go through each little area and do before and after pictures.  I'll start with the storage shelves that are also in our office.  The nice part about these shelves is that they have doors that close, so it doesn't seem to clutter up the office even though there's a bunch of things stored here that aren't even remotely office related.  The first set of shelves transformation:

I organized the paints into three groups: primers, paints, and stains.  This way it's super easy to look for the type of paint you need. All of the spray paint is in a box, drywall supplies in a box, and anything tile related (installing, cleaning, grout etc.) is together too. 

To the right of these shelves, is an open shelf area that I use for extra office supplies storage.  Before:

And After:

The last section of shelving to the right of this shelf also have doors on them.  I have Christmas decor up top (since I don't need to access it very often).  Paper and office supplies in the middle, and gun cases on the bottom.  Here's a look before.

I implemented a paper storage thing got at a thrift sale for $1 to separate some of the miscellaneous types of paper that we keep around, and limited this area to paper, envelopes, mailing labels, and hanging file supplies. This helps the area not to clutter up with other items that don't belong.

The next area is on top of our filing cabinets.  This section of horizontal space is my primo dumping spot for things coming in and out of the office.  Things that need to get filed, things that need to be entered into the computer, outgoing mail, bills, you name it.  Here's what my dumping spot had become:

I sorted, and filed, and ordered everything up.  I got another plastic paper sorting thing at another thrift sale for $0.50 and it is going to be awesome.  The top is for anything that needs to leave the office and go upstairs.  When I'm done in the office I can just grab everything in that slot and take it with me.  The middle section is for things to be filed in the business filing cabinet (lateral file), and the bottom section is for things to be filed in our personal filing cabinet.  Here's a look at it now:

 The last and most challenging area for me was the desk.  It's actually not even a desk.  It's my brother's old dining room table with all the leaves taken out.  There aren't any drawers for office supplies, so the table top tends to get cluttered very easily.  My paper recycling box was overflowing, and many random boxes had found their way under the table. 

After lots of throwing away, and sorting through papers and stacks of things, my 'desk' area is now a usable work station.  It's not perfect, and hopefully we can get a real desk someday soon, but until then it'll work for what we need.

It's hard to believe that my entire house is now finished.  I'll post my overall thoughts another time as this is getting long enough.  Now I can work on maintaining what I have set up.  I hope that by sharing my organizing adventure with you, I've spurred you on even a tiny bit to do some of the same in your own house.