February 2013 Challenge: Office & Closets {Office Space Refresh}

Yesterday I spent the morning cleaning and reorganizing my office space.

I know my space doesn't appear to be super messy - it's mostly just piles of stuff that needs to be put away. My whole focus in refreshing this space was to make it feel less busy and get rid of the junk that doesn't belong.

These are the "before" pictures...

Under my table I have a 3-drawer bin that holds my office supplies and electronics accessories. These drawers were beginning to feel like they were just collecting things I wasn't using on a regular basis, or at all anymore. I went through the drawers and sorted everything out, only keeping the items I need at my desk.

The top drawer holds my office supplies. I wasn't getting a ton of use out of this drawer because I had a bunch of stuff in there that I wasn't using, and it was just taking up space. I only kept the essentials.

before

contents

after

 The middle drawer is for electronics accessories, such as USB drives, camera cables, etc.

before

after

The bottom drawer was holding craft supplies, but being that I haven't even touched any of this stuff in months, it was time to find a new home for it.

before

contents

This drawer now holds new ink cartridges and those that I need to take to Staples to recycle.

after

 Nothing new here - just added the February calendar.

I cleaned out my pencil/pen cup and decided to take some to school. So many colorful writing utensils! =]

I printed a new to-do list to keep on my desk. You can download this same list for free here.

Overall, there isn't a huge difference in my space, but I noticed that I was able to work better today. I have more space for my planning materials for school. I have more space for blogging. It just feels more simplistic without all of the junk surrounding me.

Have you worked on your office space in the last week? If so, share what you changed about your space.

February 2013 Challenge: Office & Closets {Inspiration}

In getting ready to revamp my office space and closets, I've been searching for inspiration. Where better to look other than Pinterest?

In an effort to not have others' images repinned from my blog post, I'm not going to post any pictures in this post. Many will just pin an image without seeing that there is another owner to the image, linked through Pinterest. I, personally, will only pin an image if I know I'm pinning it directly from the original owner of the image because I think they deserve all credit.

Here are my pin boards, which you can view, with or without a Pinterest account...

Home: Offices

Home: Craft Rooms

Home: Closets

DIY: Organize

DIY: Paper Clutter Solved

If you have a Pinterest account, which you've used to pin inspiration, please share below! =]

Happy Valentine's Day!

February 2013 Challenge: Office & Closets {Identify Purpose}

I read your comments in last week's intro post and it sounds like most of us struggle with the same basic issue - your office {room or space} and your closets have become catch-alls. Paper clutter, holiday decorations, "extras" of items, etc. - nothing has a real "home". I can totally relate. In our one bedroom apartment, we have a small coat closet, a small bedroom closet {which Chris uses} and a hallway walk-in closet {which I use for my clothes and storage}. My "office" is a kitchen table I've transformed into my workspace - for blogging, bill paying {and all other paper management}, running my small businesses, planning for school, etc. Since it's located right inside our front door, it catches everything that comes in - mail, school materials, purchases, receipts, etc.

I mentioned above all of the ways I use my office space, so I definitely have a lot going on in this area. I have a lot of unneeded items on my desk and in the drawers underneath - something that needs to be repurposed. I need to only keep those things I need for my office at my desk. Everything else needs to go or be housed elsewhere.

The coat closet kind of accumulates random stuff we purchase and needs a thorough cleaning. My closet is fine on the clothes side, but the shelves are an absolute mess and also accumulate random things that don't have a home. Part of my whole New Years goal was to simplify. I think it's time to purge and donate!

I have Monday off for President's Day, so I plan on working on my office space and closets this weekend. I will be sure to take before, process, and after photos and share next week.

Your challenge this week is to look at your office and/or closets that need help and identify the purpose for these spaces. For your office - what tasks do you manage in this area and what needs to stay? For your closets - what items will you store in each closet? What can you donate?

March Challenge: Filing Cabinet Clean Out

First off, my apologies for this being a day late. I forgot my labeler at school yesterday, which I needed for this post, and I've been super sick all week. It's going around in my classroom. My students have been wonderful and taking care of one another (and me) and making sure to sanitize their hands after every nose blow, cough, and sneeze. I hope to be better soon. I'm missing out on the beautiful weather here in SLC. =[

Anyhoo...

One of the best places to accumulate paper clutter - out of sight - is a filing cabinet. Out of sight, out of mind. And yet if we categorize it, we justify it, right? Ha! Just because it's categorized, doesn't mean it's organized.

I am guilty of doing a once a year clean out of my filing cabinet, and that's it. I honestly don't accumulate a lot throughout the year, and only purge right after I do my taxes and need to add a new tax folder.

This only took me 5 minutes to do, but I know for some of you, it may take you an hour or more. If having a filing cabinet is worth it for you and your family, then take the time to organize it in a way that you'll want to keep up with it. I can't even imagine having a filing cabinet FULL of paper that has accumulated over years. Get rid of it already.

Here's the before picture.

I went through each folder and removed old papers we no longer need. I added new folders for taxes, jobs, and a few other categories.

The categories I use are: health, memberships, personal files (for records, voter registration, etc.), banking, job, taxes, apartment, Jazz (our dog), major purchases (things with warranties and such), utilities, and vehicles.

Here's the after picture (with few differences).

Not sure why I was keeping my old driver license. Most of this paper pile is old (paid off) bills from my gallbladder removal surgery - which was a financial treat, let me tell ya! Everything is now destroyed via paper shredder.

You challenge today is to clean out of your filing cabinet, if you have one. If you don't have one, I'd love to hear how you file/organize your paper!

DIY Project: Table Skirt - Part 2

Last week I posted part 1 of my table skirt DIY project.

Yesterday I continued the project and finished one side of the table. Here are the steps I took to complete it.

First I ironed the piece of fabric, removing the wrinkles. I used the steam setting to remove most of them.

I used Dritz Stitch Witchery Fusible Bonding Web to hem the sides and top of the fabric.

The directions on the packaging of the bonding web says to use a damp pressing pad and let the iron steam on the fabric for 30 seconds. It was super easy to do and worked perfectly without having to re-do anything.

After hemming 3 of the sides, I added Velcro Fabric Fusion Tape to the top of the fabric that would be attached to the top of the table. In order to cut costs and save on materials, I only attached 3 strips to the fabric.

Attaching the Velcro Fabric Fusion strips was super simple - 90 seconds of back and forth motion of the iron on the opposite side of the Velcro strip. That's it!

I ended up buying a roll of Velcro Sticky-Back Hook and Loop Fastener Tape as well to attach to the table. The Velcro Fabric Fusion tape wouldn't work on the table - so I went with the regular sticky back.

I attached the finished fabric skirt to the side of the table.

I went with Velcro to attach the fabric to the table so that I can remove the fabric if I need to. It took me about a hour to get this one piece done. I don't expect it to take me that long for each of the next pieces, but who knows. So far I'm loving the one piece I have up though. It makes such a difference.

DIY Project: Table Skirt - Part 1

A few weeks ago I showed you my "new office". My desk is a kitchen table and we use it for storage underneath. I'm not really a big fan of the way it looks, so I decided that I wanted to make a table skirt to go around the sides. I'm going to use velcro so that it can be taken off, if needed, to get/see underneath.

I got the idea from Craft-O-Maniac.

Source: craftomaniac.blogspot.com via Tiffany on Pinterest

Because of my lack of housekeeping skills, I didn't own an ironing board (but had the iron), so I had to go out and purchase one. I had never purchased fabric before, so I had no idea where to go. This has been a project in the making for over a month now, and only did I even start this project last week.

I bought the fabric from Hobby Lobby. It was my first time ever in one and I was in heaven. What an amazing store. Here's the fabric I picked out:

I started out by measuring the sides of the table. I'm only doing 3 sides (not worrying about the one against the wall), but splitting the longest side (where my chair is) in half. After I had the measurements, I measured and marked the lengths on the fabric. (I bought 3 yards, which happened to be just enough.) I added 4 inches onto the length so that I could hem the sides as well.

Ignore the clips. I thought it was going to make it easier to find where I marked, but it really didn't make anything easier. I used a pencil to mark where to cut and did so on both ends so I could easily fold the fabric in half and know where to cut.

After measuring/marking everything all out, I folded the fabric in half at the cutting points and used clips to hold the fabric in place so I didn't lose my spot.

After clipping off my ends and middle, I ironed along the crease to make it easier to a semi-straight (as best as I could) line. This was definitely a brilliant idea.

I then cut each section down the crease and repeated until all 4 sections were cut out. That's where I stopped for now. This all took me almost an hour to do. I'm challenged when it comes to using an iron/sewing. lol

I plan on continuing the project this week, and will post more as I continue. Up next: ironing each piece (I tried this last week, but the wrinkles wouldn't disappear - perhaps adding water to the iron and steaming may help??), hemming the sides, adding velcro, and attaching to the table. This will all probably come in parts...not all at once. =]

October Project: Organizing My Loan Paper Clutter & a Free Printable

Love this post and want to see more like it? Each month through 2012 I will be tackling different topics and creating free printables to go along with the project. View the projects here.

I graduated from college in May of this year and Chris graduated in May 2010. We both have student loans out the wazoo. Not all of our loans are from the same company - some are private, others through various lenders from the government. Keeping all of Chris' straight for the last year has been a challenge, and now my loans start repayment next month. I've been keeping all of Chris' loan info in a binder and my school stuff has been in an expanding file. (Chris' was also like this until he graduated, then I got rid of the unnecessary stuff.)

Since I'm in charge of paying the bills, I needed a system that was going to work for me. Here's what I came up with...

This is the binder Chris' stuff used to be in.

Everything is tabbed by the lending company. I labeled the tabs with my label maker.

I decided to switch to a prettier binder, but kept the same tabs, just adding more to the back for my section.

This is the pile of loan bills I received in the mail on Monday. Yuck.

Due to the nature of the papers inside the binder, it wouldn't make sense for me to take pictures of everything and blur everything out. So trust me when I say that transferring everything from an accordion file to a binder (in this case) has made my bill paying life so much easier.

I just keep the binder stashed with all of my other important stuff on my desk. I'm thinking the spine of the binder needs some vinyl love. Ya know, something cool like "loans"...lol.

And I promised a free printable. Here's the loan repayment log I created and have filed out and placed in the beginning of each section of tabs. This makes life so much easier and allows me to see the total going down over time...motivation I guess I'd call it. This PDF file is editable (you can type into it) if you save it to your computer (you can't edit it in Google Docs).

loan repayment log

where i'm linking up this post