Bet you thought I forgot about this little series, didn’t you? Ha! My friends, have faith in this lady. I got you. I’m so grateful my business took off as quickly as it did, but while I’m busy helping other people…spaces in my own home are being neglected. My blogging time may be limited in this stage / transition…but you should see my list of blog posts. This series is still near and dear to me and it will go on.

And it is – today!

Oh, this precious little office of mine. In less than 2 years the space has experienced some interesting phases. With my organization business cruising along, having this office organized is more important than ever. I need all of my tools at the ready when I prep and pack for a job. This wall on the back side of the office is the perfect spot for all of that. It was about time I did something back here anyway because it was a total mess…

Some of you may not agree this can be categorized as “mess”. But please trust me – it was. Add the fact this is the landing spot at the top of the stairs…it was an eye sore for all living here.

Before I share how I streamlined this back wall (simply, of course), I wanted to mention I haven’t purchased new furniture for this space. Not anything new! Just worked with what I own already, and when I felt the space needed a change or something was wrong and could be improved, I took a step back and made it happen. Again, without purchasing new furniture. Well, I should say, without pulling the trigger and completely building out the space all custom and schtuff. That isn’t happening for a while (ahem, budget!), but it’s a dream that will eventually become reality.

Back to this wall. It’s had several phases…all in some shade of mess. It started like this in September 2013…

In April 2014 it looked a bit more together…

This was actually a big improvement earlier this year…

Then I moved the black shelf down to the garage, to sit alongside its twin (not seen here but to the right). The shelves are a temporary mudroom for us and do a great job of holding shoes taken off before walking into the house. I made the most of the shelving by adding hooks to the sides so the boys can hang sport bags too…

When the black shelves moved to the garage, the white shelf with cute green cover moved up…

It’s intended for another space, clearly…but I was going for a piece to help me contain and hide my supplies.

So what exactly is back here? Hmmm, more like what isn’t back here…

 

* All of my labeling supplies (there are many)
* My work bags
* Shipping supplies
* My work tool bag
* A lot of binders!
* Pens, tape, and general office supplies
* Extra organization supplies I gift to clients (as a part of my business, I buy small inexpensive but useful items that I can gift to clients at the end of a job. I find a lot of those gifts in the Target $1 spot or sales at various craft / hobby / home stores. But the inventory was taking over!)
* Compartment organizers full of Command adhesive, tools, and other things I bring along on a job

I’ve also been solicited quite a bit lately asking to donate my time for local school auctions. So many times I assemble those gift baskets back here. What you see on the chair is the starting of one…

And I work with companies here on the blog. I have about 5 boxes of product sitting around the house / garage that need to move upstairs for project implementation, blog images, etc.

If I had a clear workspace or table, that would help tremendously…but it’s covered in junk as you see.

Recently I moved all of the paper supplies to magazine files on the black office shelving – located at a different wall…

Moving paper vertical like that changed my office world! If you struggle with this issue, please give it a shot! This little project gave me all of that drawer space in the rolling carts. Which meant I now had room to finally open a few boxes in the garage. Yep, there are still some out there. They were sitting in waiting until I had a location for the contents. Most of it’s photo boxes or photo albums, but there was a lot of scrapbooking supplies out there. I don’t have the time to scrapbook anymore, so it was time to finally get those boxes out and see what was worth keeping and what could be passed along.

I can’t tell you how amazing it felt to go through 6 boxes!…

This box in particular has been staring at me for months…

You’re going down box!

Truthfully, many of the items were donated. But it was fun to find photo albums and photo boxes that can now live in the guest room closet, where I have been keeping frames and such too. But the scrapbooking stuff – donated. Having almost 2 years of distance from those items helped seal the deal for me. I kept a few key tools that will be useful, but what remains is the stickers. My kids love the stickers and I enjoy using them for cards and school projects. I already had my sticker supply organized and kept it this way…

These are Clear Envelopes from The Container Store…

These clear envelopes come in 2 sizes and are cost-effective – $1.99 and $2.99 each. I love using these to organize stickers by theme…

I have quite a few categories and yet all of my thin envelopes fit neatly inside a drawer…

I also moved my organized greeting cards to one of these drawers…

This was taking up precious space on another shelf so I just trimmed down the custom dividers I created and popped them inside a drawer.

The tall shelf is now organized…

I found the black and white bins in the Target $1 spot a few months ago, the gray boxes were also from Target (years ago) and of course my compartment organizers….they are all here in the shelves and contain various items I need. If it looks annoying, I can close the cover. I may go ahead and buy a new cover that blends better in this space, but it’s not that important to me.

Check out the same wall now…

I have a clear desktop to work on!…

No, it isn’t beautiful, fancy or custom….but it works. I had 2 client visits this week and it was easy to grab what I needed. And quick! Oh, and I ended up finding something my client needed – it was a tiny Elfa piece that I knew I had on hand. It was buried in here. I found it and on Thursday passed it along to her.

Happy ending, people!

This project helped me get more organized! Not only that, but one little tweak led to another and another which meant several more spaces got more organized too…

So happy about this! It’s like a breath of fresh air walking up those stairs now…or getting ready for a job.

Hope you guys are all doing well! I’m on my way to the Shorty Awards in NYC….

I’m one of 7 finalists in the DIY category…

See more here!

I’ll try to post more about this before the show on Monday, but wanted to mention that you can stream the awards live if you’re interested in supporting me and anyone else who is a finalist that you enjoy on social media. Little anxious / nervous over here…I’m very much a behind the scenes gal so this is way out of the old comfort zone. But it was an honor and I’m excited to meet new people and have a great time.

Have a good weekend guys!!