Mac in the Office

Fleetwood Mac, of course.

After doing a little clean up/organization overhaul on my side of the desk, I decided it needed sprucing up with a little bit of new wall bling.

Hello, my pretty.

I switched out the small mirror with the dark frame for a larger one that used to hang in our guest room.  A few coats of spray paint transformed its frame from gold to bright white.  Between the light, the mercury glass, and the mirror, that little corner of our bookshelf is nice and bright now.  As for the wall to the left, my diplomas are right where they've always been, but I removed the hanging pocket organizer which had ceased to be useful in lieu of some fun things that felt a little more in sync with my tastes now.

Me space.

I tried to keep the color palette simple and clean to tie everything together and minimize the feeling of clutter that can quickly creep in to our office.  I also wanted the art here to be things that speak to me.  Fortunately, Target had two of these pieces- the graphic Fleetwood Mac lyric (or Jason Mraz, if you'd rather) and the ode to coffee canvas.  The bird hook used to hold our pocket organizer but now is mostly just there because it's cute and I love it.  The art to the far left is simply a printable featuring a chalk design of "I will hold myself to a standard of grace, not perfection."  The floating frame used to be a dark cherry color; a can of silver spray paint made it tie in with the rest of the grouping.

As long as other parts of the office were getting a lighter and brighter makeover, I decided the dogs' crate should get a little update as well.

New fluffy puppy blankets!

Seems like they are enjoying the improvements, right?  So am I!

Office Updates

Three things drove me to do a little overhaul of my side of the office in the midst of a not-quite-finished guest bathroom, landscaping and yard care like the dickens, and setting up a nursery for Mr. Baby.  1) Many things getting moved out of Mr. Baby's room needed rehoming in our office; 2) Some things getting moved out of the guest bathroom needed rehoming in our office; 3) IT WAS A MESS.

See what I mean?  Good luck finding scotch tape in there.

As usual, I had let too long go between organizational overhauls and I was tired of constantly digging to find whatever random office supplies I needed for the given job at hand.  It was time to purge and restructure.  Plus I had started feeling like the masculinity of our office was taking over the whole room and I wanted to inject a little "clean and girly" vibe on my side of Steve's gargantuan computer monitor.

Here's where I ended up:

Less blurry in real life.

I only bought four things to overhaul my side of the office.  Cute little stacking containers rounded up small office supplies and enabled me to group them easily by type.

Got these in the clearance section at Staples.

Small storage boxes specifically meant to fit our Ikea Expedit unit allowed me to group collections of items by use and brighten things up in the room.

I heart Ikea.

High quality wrapping paper and the blogging world's ubiquitous Martha Stewart bookplates allowed me to transform donated shoe boxes into pretty custom-sized labeled boxes.  Most shoe stores will save castoff shoe boxes for you if you just ask nicely.

The bottom row of boxes now holds our bows, ribbon, wrapping tissue, and bags that used to be stored in the chest of drawers in Mr. Baby's closet.  The rolls of wrapping paper have been corralled against the end of the shelving unit using two Ikea plastic garbage sack holders (I can't claim credit for this genius idea, I saw it on Pinterest).

I still have too much wrapping paper.

I purged some books from my collection (it was fun while it lasted, Twilight) and others (favorite childhood books of mine and a few of my Mom's!) were moved to Mr. Baby's room.  The OCD freak in me loves that my books are now separated by genre- fiction in one cubby, non-fiction in the next, and keepsakes like yearbooks and Bibles in the next.

All of my printer-compatible paper now lives in one box together rather than stacked on its side which will make for less bent corners.  I love that there's a separate box for software and ink- things that I need to keep but don't access frequently.  Perhaps my favorite box is the one labeled "Mail Kit" that I stocked with our business size privacy envelopes, return address stickers, and stamps.  I LOVE having all the things I need to pay a bill or mail a card in one spot, and I love being able to simply pull it down from the shelf to use it and then close the lid and stick it back on the shelf when I'm done.  Life hack!!

Mail Kit, Ink & Software, Paper & Printables; To be filed.

The mercury glass collection that has lived in our guest bathroom since we finished it has found a new home on top of my side of the shelving unit, along with a silver serving platter that we got for a wedding gift and is too beautiful to put food on, and a picture of my co-workers (who are some of the best and most inspiring educators I know).  Overall my arrangement lacks balance, especially with so much going on at Steve's end of the shelving unit, but some of his office-y things (like the giant Corsair poster) may also be moving to Mr. Baby's room, so I'm OK with the lack of balance for now.

Work in progress, but much improved!

Now I'm just keeping an eye out for some art that inspires me and lends to the clean, girly feeling to go on the wall next to my degrees and I'll be completely satisfied.  Until the next time my organization gets unruly!

File it Away

Not sure about everyone else, but New Years totally puts me in the mood to organize.  No joke.  Something about new beginnings and fresh starts makes me want to de-clutter and streamline my life.

One of those areas that always gets an organization overhaul after December 31 is the financial filing system. The box full of eight-year-old records gets sifted through for any important documents or keepsakes that we might've missed when we boxed them up all that time ago and everything that remains gets shredded and tossed.  All of my 2012 files lived in two storage boxes in our Expedit shelving right next to my head for easy access.  I pulled all of those out, condensed what needed to be saved for records and transferred them to a box in the closet.

Put it right back in the empty 2005 box, just changed the label.

As I was sifting through all things 2012, I groaned for the 627th time that the hanging files I had been using were really annoying.  They kept the lid from closing tightly, some of them had pockets inside where things would get stuck, and some of the labels didn't match anymore.  "College Records-Colleen" has been out of commission for almost four years now but I still had a hanging file for it.  What's up with that?  So I decided enough with the groaning.  It was time to switch up the way I file my records to make my life easier.

First I did one of the things I am best at in life: I made a giant list.  I put every type of utility bill, loan, and financial or confidential paper I typically save on the list to help me see if there were some areas where I could consolidate files or maybe just needed to sort them in a different way.  Sure enough, I had a lot of that.  In my old filing system, I had a folder for my school loans, one for Steve's school loans, one for our car loan, one for our credit card, one for random retail credit cards we rarely use... you get the picture.  Why have a bunch of hanging files when they could be consolidated under the heading of Credit & Loans?  So I ended up re-categorizing where I'd store some of our records, and decided that instead of hanging files, I'd use expandable files and tabbies on top to do my organizing.

Office supplies- yum.

It's so much better!  And the best part is that it fit in only one box, meaning I gained a whole cube of storage space!  So I used that to my advantage.  I put the "to be filed" box up at eye-level so I'd be more likely to put things in it and remember to file them (ha!).  I also moved my pens and scissors a little closer to me so that I could see them more easily.  And I scooted the records box more towards the middle of our desks, since I don't need access to it more than twice a month.  I am loving the final result.

Somebody needs to get on the dusting, pronto.

I can find things easily.  I can put things in easily.  And I also love that I can do this:

Need to dig through a file?  Just pull it outta the box!

I'm feeling pretty good about this organizational upgrade.  The Type A in me wonders if there's an even easier way to do it.  What's your best file organizing tip?

Office: Move-In to Present

Our office is probably the most "finished" room in our house.  Steve and I spend a lot of time in there, and so do our fur babies, so it made sense for us to really focus our efforts on making the office comfortable and functional sooner rather than later.

The office in our old house was kind of a mess.  My desk was crammed in a little cubby right in front of the window.  Steve's desk took up an entire wall of the room.  All of our furniture was hand-me-down (with lots of warping and chipping particle board) and nothing matched.  We decided that for this house, we wanted a more fair division of space between the two of us but we still wanted something that looked cohesive- we were aiming for "one office" rather than "two offices in one room."  We also knew that we wanted a ton of storage and display space.  Enter Ikea's Expedit series.

The view from the hallway.

Closer view- this photo was taken last winter, before we hung the pictures and switched out my task light.

We used two 4x4 Expedit bookcases and two desk inserts to span one entire wall of our office.  Boxes from Ikea hold everything from office supplies to the current year's records to excess knick-knacks to our router.  The unit did a nice job of making this space look like one office.  And our respective sides of the bookshelf helped us individualize our spaces.

The girly side.

My side's stashed with my favorite books and keepsakes like yearbooks and old Bibles.  I've got task lighting thanks to Ikea, a couple of cheap mirrors, a clock, and some vases (the green one was my grandmother's and the small silver one is from Steve's family).  I've also got some of my little kitsch next to my monitor- a baseball signed by the '89 San Francisco Giants (a gift from my Grandpa Lane), a tiny ceramic cat playing a tiny ceramic piano, a photo of my friend Rebecca and I from a trip to tennis camp in '96, and gifted pins and plaques.  I opted for a chair that looked a little more formal than a typical office chair- it came from Target.

Command Center.

The wall behind my desk helps us keep track of pertinent details.  Obviously, the calendar helps.  The organizer pockets on the left are rigged together with ribbon and hung on an adorable bird hook I found at JoAnn Fabric (here's the tutorial I used for the organizer pockets on Pinterest).  The top left pocket serves as our "inbox."  Things go here that need to be dealt with- bills, coupons, take out menus.  The top right pocket is for my random things that need to be kept track of but that I don't want living on my desk- receipts, paint chips, tickets to upcoming events, that kind of thing.  Steve's got the bottom left pocket for that as well.  And the bottom right pocket holds extra greeting cards that can be used in a pinch.

The manly side.

Steve used his side of the office as an excuse to put up all of the things that I would not let him put anywhere else in the house!  The Corsair poster, framed tattoo drawings (a gift from a friend), a howling wolf statue, vintage binoculars, a wooden gun that his grandfather carved, models of tanks, pictures of his team when he was in the Army, his firefighter hat, a bottle of "Viking Blod" Nordic honeywine.

Since most of our books are in this room, we also wanted a comfortable space to curl up and read.

Book time!

There's a fuzzy blanket hidden in the leather cube, and plenty of continued manliness on the walls.  Steve's Army medals and certificates, his grandparents' vintage rifle, his collection of steins and jugs, and a flag from the USS Arizona.  Steve and I both wish we had a handy place to set a drink near this chair, but there's not much room for that.  Maybe a floating shelf or a C-table one day?

We needed two more things from this room:  room for extra storage and records, and a place for the doggies.  Our dogs want to be close to us wherever we are, and since we knew we'd be spending a lot of time in the office, we wanted a place for them to rest comfortably without being underfoot.  Hence our closet:

Business up top, sleepy snuggles down below.

The icky bi-fold doors were taken down and replaced with a curtain rod to pretty the room up but also allow for maximum air-flow.  We ripped out the wire shelving unit (they were ubiquitous in this house's closets) and Steve built shelving to fit around our doggles' crate.  It works awesome!  We've got all of our records plus several boxes of keepsakes or dog-care items up top, and the dog crate and Tupperware food bin on the bottom.  When we put the dogs up for the night, or when guests come over, we simply close the curtains.

We are really happy with how the functionality and look of this room turned out, and we don't have many other plans for upgrades (Steve's obsession with computer-related hardware aside).  That's fine with us- it's easier for us to unwind in the office because it's finished and it leaves more time to focus our work on the rest of the house!