An organized office space...

Boy With six kids and a wonderful husband, I often struggle with staying on top of housework. Yesterday it occurred to me: Do the housework first before you get to do something 'fun' in the day. So, I hijacked the wi-fi router from the teen/preteens- right in the middle of a show they were watching on Netflix for the 100th time. They laughed, and then got started washing dishes and clearing out their rooms. To my surprise this worked well! They completed the chores they had to do in under 30 minutes! That's what I call motivation!

So with some of the time they saved me this week, I decided it was time to organize the home office. Below are the before and after shots. I now know where everything is and can stay better organized because I now have a SYSTEM! Please bear in mind that this is merely a home office located in our master bedroom that is simply a corner of the room that I have repurposed into a little office space so I can work out of the house. 

I bought dollar store bins... I labeled them with the following labels 

1) incoming 

2) outgoing

3) filing 

4) processing

(Thanks to www.alejandra.tv for the recommendation!)

Right now since I was so far behind my "processing" file is rather empty and my "filing" bin is very full I'm sure this will change in the next day or so as I'm get through some of this filing.

I bought and installed some cheap shelving. Lowe's and/or you and a friend can cut and hang them in about an hour.

Once I decide what color I'm going to paint everything I will let you know! Obviously they're unfinished for now.

So, here is the before picture: (scary!)

And here, my friends, is the after photo!

This is by no means a finished product, as I am sure every system is not without its flaws, but what I do know is it's a start!

And the fabric on the bulletin board to the right in the picture is just fabric that I found at Hobby Lobby on sale for 40% off and I recovered an old bulletin board. The sign above it says "faith" and it was also purchased at Hobby Lobby. 

The old gray filing cabinet is in dire need of some refinishing I intend on purchasing some metal spray paint or something like that to painted in the near future. It was recycled from an old company back in the 90's that was selling off some of its assets and I was able to pick it up.

And the been on the far right beside the file cabinet is simply an old Girl Scout cookie crate box that I cut the lid off of and and recovered. The other little black paisley patterned box next to the upright sorter is a shoebox base that I recovered with some fabric that was left over from our wedding. I will put out a tutorial blog post about how to recover boxes and use them for organizing to avoid the expense of buying a bunch of generic looking bins. I just thought the ones from the dollar store were kind of cute with their polkadots.

Please leave me feedback and let me know what you like and what you Might recommend as changes to the layout.

Have a great day friends! Please leave your feedback. :)

Jodi