Hi!
Welcome to our home here in Greenville, SC! Please come in and make yourself at home! Today, for the first time ever on my blog, I will be sharing the small office (10′ X 10′) I share with my husband, with you! A tour of my small office home.
Let’s start with the closet. I sell on Etsy, Amazon, Craigslist, and eBay, so this closet stores the stuff I need to package and ship the sold items.
Other categories also kept here:
Packing Supplies (tape, tags, box labels)
Cutting Tools (Creative Memories Paper Cutter, Circle Cutter, and scissors)
Adhesives (Super Glue, Elmer’s, hot glue gun)
Ribbon
Card Making Supplies (tape, glitter)
Craft Stuff (paint, paint brushes, etc.)
Gift Wrapping (bags, tissue, boxes)
School Supplies (binders, paper, folders, pencils, pens)
Picture Frames
Gifts (to give)
Our paper shredder stays hidden in here, too.
The right side of the closet holds scales, air pillows, paper wadding, peanuts, and shredded paper. Hanging on the door are a few of my favorite things. They are Jall Laundry Bags with Stands from IKEA.
However, I don’t use them for laundry. I use them for donations as I collect them from around the house. They’re quite handy and inexpensive. I try to remember these things.
On the other side of the room, I hung an old cabinet, and I use baskets to hide all the gadgets and such that could so easily get lost in a drawer somewhere. My hubby, Mark, is a “Gadget Guy”, but I like things pretty.
So, this is what he gets from living with me. I try to remember this, too. Waiting to be used, is a piece of chalk that is held on one of the doors with two cup hooks.
He is also a Professional Organizer. A few years ago, he worked with me, full-time, for a year. He loves to label things. I love them labeled, so we make a good team!
On the side of our desk is a handy-dandy clipboard holder. The top clipboard holds weekly blog calendar printables for bloggers, that I found HERE at Living Lucurto. The bottom clipboard are forms for the use in completing projects room by room, as we stage our home to sell this year.
This basket contains our most-used file folders. I was inspired by an idea at my friend (and fellow home stager) Kate’s place, Chic on a Shoestring Decorating. This desk was found on the side of the road, and the shelves above it, in a friend’s trash can.
I painted everything vanilla-ish white, and now they get along with each other. I added the pulls found HERE and French numbering. So I thought. (My college Junior, Miss S, who’s in her second year of French,
informs me that “ONE” is actually spelled “UN”, not “UNE”.
Thanks a lot Google Translate. (Next time, I’ll just ask Miss S.) She also informs me that the other numbers are in fact, spelled correctly. The top drawer was pared down, then pared down some more.
How much do we REALLY use, anyway? Here’s something we use several times a week, a Receipt Catcher, it keeps those pesky, cluttery, easily misplaced receipts categorized. Drawer Deux. What we need and use, nothing more. I could write a whole other post (or five) about how to organize your paper. But, for this post, you’ll see that we divide our paperwork into major categories first, using hanging files, then subdivide those with manilla folders inside the hanging ones.
Some Major Categories and some subcategories we use:
Photographs
(To Scan, To Photoshop)
Finances
(Estate Planning, Annual Credit Reports, 401K Plan)
Education
(Elementary, Middle School, High School, College Forms and Grades)
Bills
(Natural Gas, Water, Mortgage, Cable, Electricity)
Income Tax
(A file for each of the last 7 years)
Manuals
(Home Appliances, Personal Appliances, Electronics, Furniture)
In the desk area, we keep memorabilia and things that personally inspire us. On the desk, to the right of the PC, there’s this jar. It fills with bird feathers. These feathers were collected and saved through the years
by my grandmother, who loved wild birds and had her own parakeets. This jar reminds me of her. It’s no surprise I love birds, too.
On the flower frog, is a picture of my GREAT-grandmother’s home in Clinton, Wisconsin, taken circa 1921. Though I’ll never know for sure, I imagine the house is yellow, and I am reminded that my great grandmother, who took the picture and had it reproduced postcard-style, had a love for her home, too. Behind the PC is another favorite thing, a Brother P-Touch Printer. It connects with the PC and I can create just about any type of label with it. To the left of the monitor is our Canon Pixma MG8120 printer. Copy/Photo/Scan all-in-one. Simpleness in Office Gadget form. It’s a beautiful thing. (And a tad dusty. The maid quit today. Okay, the maid is actually me.)
M” for Mark. The ship was Mark’s grandfather’s and it plugs in and lights up. The wire basket holds my journals through the years, and my day planner. There is a picture of me as a three year-old. (I can’t believe they got me to hold still for this picture. I must have been bribed.
It probably involved chocolate.)
I found the clock-face printable in the round, black frame HERE. Photographs from 1880-now. My collection of life:beautiful magazines. More of my FAVORITE things. A vintage scale, flower frog atop of it, covered books, and God’s Word. I found this huge frame at Hobby Lobby. It measures 3 feet tall by 5 feet wide.
When I first saw it in the Clearance section, it was marked down to $65.00. I waited a few more weeks. See what I paid?
I cut a huge piece of cardboard to fit in the frame, and covered it dropcloth fabric. It displays a pencil sketch of my kitchen by Jeep, our Chinese exchange student. Jeep also wrote the Chinese idiom that reminded him of me: “Childish one without Limit”. It also holds my hubby’s and my first business card, the tag from my childhood cat, Doorbell, a pencil sketch of jars from Miss Lovely, our South Korean exchange student, my color wheel and 1/4″ scale furniture stencil from my first Interior Design course years ago, the staging color paint chips for our home, a drawing of the TARDIS (are any of you Dr. Who fans?) and a watercolor abstract by our Miss A, and a photograph of Miss A and Miss Lovely.
We also have a Thai exchange student. (I need to get something on the board from him, too.)
Near the closet is an etagere. It holds the cubbies that came with the ugly desk that was found on the side of the road.
Also, paper.
Envelopes and cards.
Labels and photo paper.
And Manilla folders.
Thank you, everyone for stopping by today!
I’m honored to have had you visit me! I hope I have inspired you to make your office a place of calm creativity!
Please rest a moment and peruse the Cottage Living mags (These were discontinued, but do any of you have any?) while I get you a cup of tea before you’re on your way Home.
Please have a beautiful, blessed day!
Warm goodbye hugs!
The next stop on the tour is Becky’s Home.
She blogs at Clean Mama, and she is one cool lady!