This house is a good size, but there are space challenges. Some rooms were big and empty, with the need to be totally planned out. Like the master closet. What was once this…

Is now this…

And there are awkward little spaces too, like the spot at the bottom of the stairs. After some thinking, I decided to build a few floating shelves. It went from this to this…

To this…

And not that long ago I talked about making the most of your small spaces. I have random tiny spots around the house where I’ve tried to carve out meaning and organization, like the coffee bar in the kitchen…

Or my cheap solution to my lack of a mudroom…

Or making the most of your under sink space…

Even making the most of a tiny 1960’s linen closet…

I could go on and on about the small spaces I’m working on around here…but let’s get back to this corner of the home office…

*cringe*

Just looking at that photo. Ugh! Stresses me out. This is the back, far corner of my home office. At some point (read = need more money), this office will be completely built out. I have big, beautiful dreams for this little office loft. In the meantime, however, I have to work with what I have. That means it needs to happen on a budget. How do I make this happen? I shop around my house first. Always.

In a matter of 30 minutes, this awkward corner went from this…

To this…

Better, right? Or is that just me being hopeful? 😉

Again, this…

To this…

The small black folding table used to be in Aiden’s room, before his new desk arrived. With the grace of God this little table fit perfectly between the end of my desk and the corner of the room. I couldn’t believe it! I had the additional rolling cart just collecting dust down in the garage…

Seriously, it was almost on its way out to Goodwill. Adding the 3rd rolling cart, I was able to organize more items into drawers and out of sight. I labeled them with washi tape and my label maker…

The folding table gave me a good amount of new surface space too, which is where the printer is now as well as a few other office supplies that I wanted to move off my computer desktop…

Speaking of my desktop, I had these 2 little pretties sitting here for a long time…

While they were helpful, I needed more workspace so I moved one off the desktop altogether and left this one here…

It contains the items I find I use most of the time. The rest didn’t need to sit out in the open, so away into drawers everything went.

I also re-arranged the contents of my Martha Wall Manager so that I could put all of my “inbox” items into the first hanging file…

Everything is still at my fingertips, but not taking up desktop space.

It’s amazing what a difference that small change made. Just adding the 3rd rolling cart and folding table — again, that I already owned and were sitting in the garage — it free’d up so much desktop space…

And then the improvements spread over to my desktop as a result, as well.

And it didn’t cost me anything! Friends, before you run out to the store to grab solutions, look around your house first. See if there are items not being utilized to their full potential, or items not being used at all. Don’t be afraid to move things around or try something different…remember, you can always move it back to the way it was previously if you aren’t happy. No commitment!

What I love about living in this office space and moving things around? I’m getting a better feel for the permanent build-out of the space. I definitely like the wrap around desk idea…gives me so much work surface space. But I clearly need a lot of cabinets with doors. Don’t even get me started on the moving boxes full of photos and scrapbooking stuff. Yup, in the garage! One day they will see the sun again.

Have a great day peeps!