Office Corner

I’ve been quiet lately because I’ve been working on this:

It’s one of the corners of our “office” which is really just one end of our living room. I started working on the office area a couple of weeks ago, but I wasn’t really seeing any progress. Then I realized that I was trying to tackle the whole area at once instead of sticking to small sections at a time. So I focused on this one area near the piano. Believe or not, my poor daughter is trying to learn to play the piano. I say trying because she can’t really get at it to practice. Yes, I felt very badly about it.

In my defense, though, this little corner didn’t always look like that. This is the only “before” picture I have and it’s really more of a work-in-progress picture. This is the one corner I forgot to take a picture of before I got started! So what you are seeing is the whole purge-sort-reorganize process in action.

I started with the bookshelf which is where I keep most of our currently in use school books. The picture shows it after the purge. Take my word for it that it was a mess. Actually, don’t take my word for it. Most of what you see on the floor was on the shelves or in the cabinet. I pulled out everything we are no longer using and sorted it into piles on the floor.

Next I pulled out everything from the corner between the piano and bookshelf. It was piled about as high as the piano with all sorts of junk. A lot of it went out in the trash.

Our office was always a problem area. I’ve mentioned that we don’t have a real desk to work at or to store things in and that creates a lot of clutter. This area was also the hardest hit during our flood. A lot of the stuff in the area was moved quickly to other areas of the house or tossed into plastic bins. Then we moved and it was all boxed up as is. Not the best circumstances to try to unpack in.

So here is the after picture.

Everything was redistributed around the house, thrown out or tagged to put in to storage. My school shelves are now organized by topic and by child. I put a basket in front of the cabinet doors to prevent 22 month old Bip from opening the doors. The basket has surplus school supplies like handwriting paper, coloring sheets, colored paper, folders and sheet protectors. And Pumpkin Girl can now get to the piano to practice! The piano itself needs more work, but that’s a post for another day.

In case you missed it, you can see the other areas of my home that I have uncluttered here: Corners of My Home. Hopefully I’ve inspired someone to tackle their own clutter and create a more peaceful home.