Notes From Heather: Office Organization Please

I am weird. I know it, and I'm okay with it. Like I LOVE home improvement stores--the smell of the wood and the lighting area, oooh and the paint colors...ahhhh. And I also LOVE office supply stores--all the little stickies and I adore desks, and really all things organizing like baskets and files. I am not sure where these obsessions came from but luckily I enjoy looking at these stores but don't end up buying much.

Anyway, when we moved, the first area I wanted to work on was our office. We have a large room called an "office" but really limited space in it for office stuff (because of the gun safe, Ms. PacMan Machine, and 80's Pepsi Machine...don't ask). We also only have a small desk that I found in a thrift store in San Diego and have finally just refinished so I wasn't ready to part with it and buy a bigger desk like we probably need.

Here are some pictures of before:

While the top of my desk isn't usually this messy, I will in all honesty admit this picture was taken about 3 months after we moved in and I had been simply setting my computer on top of all the papers and crap. Now if someone had been coming over I would have smushed them all into a pile and possible shoved some of them into the filing cabinet but these are true before pictures, sad as they may be.

I took most of my inspiration from Better Homes & Gardens January magazine. Especially for the filing system that we now have in place, which includes an Inbox and files for Do Now, Do Later, and Pending. I also added a Receipts folder and then hanging bins for each of us and for Filing. I found some pretty fabric to go with my color scheme so I covered some cheap plastic hanging bins from Target with the fabric so they look nicer.

The other big help was a label maker. I love label makers (part of my organization fetish) and Honey gave me one for my birthday a few years back and I truly was SO excited. In the office I made labels for everything! Greeting cards, different types of paper like Cardstock, Photo Paper, etc, and for all our filing. If I ended up on a desert island, I might want to take a label maker, just so I would have something to keep myself entertained.

Greeting cards and stationary.

A folder for each type of paper.

Throughout the years I have collected about 15 different types of paper...don't ask me how. And before, they were all over the place getting shuffled around and making a mess of the shelf under the desk. So now I put them all in their own labeled folder in mesh bin so they can be easily found and now take up way less space.

I wanted to find a way to keep the cords for my printer, iPhone, camera, and charger off my desk and out of my way when not using them. I have seen the great idea on Pinterest where people use binder clips to keep cords neat, but my desk edges wouldn't allow that so I rigged some tacks and twist-ties to make little holders for my printer cord and charger cord. Then I found a great little box at Target in their $1 section for all the other little cords that hang about.

And finally I added a calendar, little cork board and white board as well as a cover for my ugly, beat-up, filing cabinet. In the end this is how it looks...