Last Thursday, a friend brought lunch to my office. I guess having someone other than my boss see my work area made me see the space with new eyes. Suddenly, I couldn't stand how junky my desk was! I decided that day that I would organize my work space.
On Friday, I headed to Staples to check out what kind of office organization supplies they had. I immediately grabbed a cart and was all ready to load her up, when I decided to call my friend for advice. She advised me not to purchase anything yet, but to think first about what I wanted from the space, and how I wanted it to look and function. Okay, solid advice. It was hard, but I forced myself to step away from the organizers and leave!
I knew I couldn't go crazy in here. My boss uses the other side of my desk, and he wouldn't appreciate anything too girlie. He likes things to be kept professional around here, which is fine. We already had some black mesh wire things, so I decided to stick with that theme for simplicity.
Well, I thought about it all weekend, and yesterday decided to just go to Office Depot (because its closer to my office than Staples) and get whatever I thought I could use, and return what I didn't end up using. I think I had way too much fun with this project!
First, let's take a look at the "before" shots. Beware, its pretty bad.
I know, I know. How did I work like that???! Amazingly, I knew exactly where everything was there. It might not have looked organized, but I had a system.
This is the area to the left of my desk. (Well, its all one big desk.) Again, even though everything was jumbled and gross-looking, I knew exactly where everything was.
This is the area to the right of my desk. Everything was just piled around. Yuck.
How about a close-up of my desk area? *shudder*
So distracting!
Okay, now how about some refreshing "after" shots? ( :
I took everything off the space and cleaned it really well (uh, hello, dust bunnies!). I sorted everything into piles and tried to think about where I wanted everything to go. For the most part, I liked the overall placement of things, it was just too much going on. I'll just let the "after" pictures speak for themselves.
Ahhh....MUCH better, huh? I feel like my desk is 3 times as big now! I love how open it is under my screens now.
This area didn't change a whole lot, but I think its a big improvement. I love the sorter that holds the binders in the middle. No more falling over binders!
I love my little pen/highlighter/note pad station! Its kind of hard to see (iPad pics, sorry), but I corralled all my everyday supplies (stamps, paperclips, binder clips, hole puncher, stapler, and my stress relieving slinky!) on the top shelf of those stackable trays. At first I had those just neatly placed on the desk, but I realized how much nicer it looked to have them corralled in a tray like that.
So far, I'm very happy with this arrangement! My boss was happy too, so that's a nice bonus.
Oh, I did one other little project at work yesterday, too. I updated my invoice paying system! (How nerdy is it that I'm super excited about this?!) My previous system was just a regular folder with 2 pockets (which was absolutely falling apart). Not very efficient. So I bought this handy dandy expanding file folder and I think I'm gonna like using it for invoices.
I know I'm not the only one who goes gaga for office supplies and organization, cause I read too many blogs to think otherwise! I don't have a home office (well, we have one, but its my husband's; I don't use it, so I don't get to organize or decorate it), so it was fun to get the chance to do something like this. Yep, I'm a nerd! ( :
Great post. I would love it if you joined and contribute your awesome posts at my link party at City of Creative Dreams on Fridays :D Hope to see you there at City of Creative Dreams Link Party
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