My quest for organization this year has hit a wall, which is made of paper and junk mail and boxes of envelopes and youth applications and notebooks and drawing paper and mugs of pencils and lamps and hatboxes, books, bottles of lotion and tape measures.
That’s right. It’s time to clean my home office again.
This room has become the house’s junk drawer. The clearinghouse of miscellaneous crap we need or think we need or just have no other place for.
This year, my goal for the room is to take out the glass topped computer desk and move it downstairs for my husband’s computer. I want to find two nice sturdy wooden sawhorses and paint them white and use them for the base of the desk I am going to make out of the old door from my parents’ house. I thought about using file cabinets for the base, but the very idea of that was so disheartening I couldn’t think straight.
I need to empty out the closet, which is packed to the gills with boxes of old files and documents and school papers and youth retreat souvenirs and old clothes and books and an old dresser (for real) and God only knows what else.
I would love to take the closet doors off and make the closet into a work nook for my sewing machine or my drawing table and supplies.
The office organization system I put together from itso brand storage stuff I got at Target a couple of years ago has been turned on its head after I took half of the system out of the office and put it in the kitchen to organize our things by the back door. So I would like to get that back into the office by getting something else in the kitchen.
I will have pictures of some of this stuff eventually but honestly, the office is such a train wreck right now that I don’t have the stomach for it. For now, here is a quick diagram of the room:
(Sorry, I just drew it and snapped a picture with my phone).
The window situation is that we have those 1950s ranch high privacy windows; they are about five feet from the floor, so I can put things below them and get lots of light in the room. As you walk in the door, to the right is the only full wall in the room. That’s where I have the big postal sorting cabinet I got on Craigslist last fall.
My desk is currently in the middle of the west wall, below the window, but that means I have my back to the door while I’m working, and I’m not a fan of that. The drawing table is in the corner by the closet. There is stuff EVERYWHERE.
If I make the desk out of a door, it’s going to be huge. I’ll put tempered glass on top of it and it will be standard height, but that sucker is going to be enormous. I’m thinking that if I put it on the big wall by the door, I could put some filing stuff to the left of it, in the northwest corner of the office. Then I could move the postal cabinet to the west wall.
Any feng shui suggestions? Any regular suggestions? I’m not looking to spend a bunch of money and I don’t think I’m going to paint the room, even though it is aqua with a deep purple ceiling.
My only suggestion is to for sure get at least one filing cabinet – mine holds so much stuff and is the key to keeping me sane and cutting down on clutter. I throw everything in the smaller drawer on top (in one of those cardboard boxes that mandarin oranges come in from Trader Joes) when it comes in the mail and then go through and file it it in the bottom drawer or pay it at the beginning of the month.
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Why not leave the postal cabinet where it is, and have your desk perpendicular to it, a few feet out from the west window, so you’ll be sitting behind the desk, but facing the door?
I may just need to come and sit in that room and get a feel for it. I love re-arranging. I did my classroom, my boss’ office, and the counselor’s office and we’re all feeling fine! Do you have some of those furniture movers? Those things are awesome. If you put something in a place that you decide you don’t love, you can swip it right out of there and move it somewhere else.
Don’t paint!
if it is that big, don’t turn the door into a desk. It will take up too much valuable space, and invite clutter. Use it as a laundry sorting table, with a glass cover. You already have one “recycled” piece of furniture in the office. More will make it look junky. “Plink…plink”
I’m with eliintexas. If the door is too large for a desktop then just lean it up against the wall as room decor. That might look nice too. Where are you going to get sawhorses, by the way, and will they be old wooden ones, or metal ones?
I love the idea of using the door as your desktop, but if it’s not working out, then I agree—it would be really cool hanging on a wall—in your office or even another room. We had a beautiful old door from my grandmother’s house and my brother hung it on a wall in his dining room and it was so cool. It even had the old doorknob still on it.
My office is similar in size and orientation, except on the south wall are the washer and dryer.
I put my large desk diagonally in the south west corner, where I face the door. I could not face a wall. It would make me crazy.
I have those high-up windows like you, except only on the south wall. I hate them. I think they are completely inadequate. I told the landlord that I need French doors on that wall, out to a patio, but he said no. Jerk.
I need a large flat surface as a desk, as I like to spread my stuff out so I can see what I am doing. So I understand your wanting the door as a desktop. But I must agree with others that it just might be too big for the space, especially given the postal thingy you have.
Sorry, error. The washer and dryer are on the east wall. Much better than where they were originally – in the dank basement that I could access only through the Bilco doors outside. Oh yeah, fun to do the laundry down there.
I went to the laundromat until the washer and dryer were installed upstairs. Just more fun for all!
Look for some inexpensive low hanging file cabinets or book shelves to serve as the door/table ‘legs’ on the ends. The drawers are generaly deep and wide anyway or you could put baskets on the book shelves. It will give you some awesome storage space for supplies.