New month, new area of the house to organize. This month, I’m going to be participating in the 31 Day Organizational Challenge over at I’m an Organizing Junkie for some extra motivation.
The first step of the challenge is to pick a room that needs some major work, take some before pictures and develop a plan of attack.
The room I’ve selected to work on this month is the.. (drumroll…)
Office!
Before I get to the wonderful “before” picture, here’s a little backstory on what the office was and what it has become.
The Story of Our Office
Originally, we used our second bedroom as the office (I use office as the official term but it seems office = dumping ground in our house for some reason, no matter where it is). When I first bought the house, I had very minimal furniture and storage in there. Shortly after I got married, my husband and I bought a larger desk unit from Office Depot. I really liked the desk. It fit well in the room and had more storage space than the small writing table I originally bought for it.
When I was pregnant, I planned to split the use of the second bedroom between a nursery and an office. I had dreams of a super organized space with multiple functions in 120 or so square feet. Luckily, my husband and father-in-law knew me better than I knew myself and talked some sense into me. We decided it was best to build an extra room into the back half of our garage (we had been going through cycles of filling it up and cleaning it out to try to get a car in it for months).
My husband, father-in-law, dad and other helpers framed in a wall, ceiling, door and window (to let in natural light through the garage window), added a closet around the ugly hot water heater, moved electrical outlets from the garage ceiling lights to the office walls, added heat from the furnace, insulated the walls, hung drywall, put up molding, painted and then moved all the office furniture in from the second bedroom.
The whole project was a wonderful example of a thrifty DIY (closet doors from Habitat for Humanity’s ReStore, carpet from Craigslist, molding from my parents) and it looked amazing!!!! I couldn’t have asked for anything better.
Unfortunately, the office furniture wasn’t as functional in this space as it was in the second bedroom. It was one of those things that you could measure over and over but not really get a feel for until it was there. The room started to accumulate extra stuff after my son was born and never quite recovered UNTIL NOW!
“Before” Pictures
I must tell you that as proud as I am of how organized and clutter-free the entryway now is (notice the lack of before pics for that), I’m equally embarrassed of how cluttered and disorganized the office currently is. I know that everyone has a room or at least a drawer that is the “catch-all” for their house but it’s a little difficult to broadcast our “catch-all” to the world. That being said, here are the glorious ”before” pictures (with beautiful and organized ”after” pictures to come by the end of the month). Don’t judge!
If you want to play along at home (or you can enter the challenge online), pick the room in your house that has become a dumping ground or, at least, needs some organization. Take some “before” shots and imagine what the space could become.
As for the plan, I have a million project ideas already swimming in my head for this space. I’ll post some plan ideas and inspiration next week. For now, enjoy looking at my mess and dreaming about how wonderful it will look in a few weeks.
I would love to hear if anyone is joining me in tackling a major organizational project this month (or week or year). Please tell me about in the comments below and join the conversation.
Oh my goodness yes! Our downstairs bedroom has had all manner of random things in it from birthing balls, to guest room furniture, to work out stuff (ergs, pull up bars), and the closet and bathtub both have old/broken chairs in them. Every house has its dumping ground somewhere!
That’s what I figured. Most people are just good at hiding it (or have a big enough house that you can’t find it). Our dumping ground is on the mend. Hoping it won’t turn up somewhere else. Be sure to follow along and hopefully I can inspire you to fix up yours!
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