My Desk - Before and After

I'm a totally organization freak, if things are out of place I get really uncomfortable.  I do however tend to let things slide and then I can't stand it anymore.  I waited to get through my Project Life work and then decided my desk needed an overhaul.  Plus I had my new spinning rack to load up and find a home for.  Mind you, in comparison to others, my desk even at what I consider its worst is hardly a mess to others.  Just proof that everyone's tolerance for mess is vastly different.

Here is my space before;

I'm lucky to have this space.  At our last house I also had a nice space but this one is great.  It's a small loft area that already had the build in desk and drawers.  I do love it, it just has some limitations.  The angles make it hard to have a large open work space when I'm trying to lay things out and the windows also present a problem.  They face West so in the afternoon the sun setting is pretty unbearable to deal with.  I have yet to figure out a window covering solution that will work with the slight arch of the windows.  A project I defiantly need to tackle.

The shelves hanging on the wall are from Ikea a few years ago.  They are just simple pine shelves and metal brackets.  They fit perfectly in that space and hold some nick knacks from my life.  I could probably move these things and utilize the shelf's for more scrap stuff butt I do like to have things in arm reach as you will see below so for now the nick knacks are staying.

The space is open to the floor below so I have this nice shelf that I do use a lot to set things.  As you can see in this photo its a mess of papers and things that don't normally occupy my desk space so it was just a matter of putting them back to where they had come.

The shelf was in our bedroom until recently.  My husband made it for us, its a copy of of shelf I had seen in a Pottery Barn catalog ages ago.  We've have it for awhile and its moved around a lot and used to hold our daughter's toys in our family room at our old house.

My desk chair is from Ikea, I got it when we moved here almost two years ago.

I'm thinking I would like to rip up the carpet and put tile down. Rolling around is a pain because I'm always rolling off my floor pad and then my wheels get stuck, annoying for sure.

And the after.

I moved a bunch of stuff around. The books that were sitting next to my printer moved to the shelf, and I put my photo printer in its place. It made more sense for the two printers to be together. I left my Ott Light where it was and my white paper holder where it was as well. I'm right handed so it makes sense to have things to my right whenever possible. I also moved the clear plastic paper sorter to this area for a simple reason, I didn't like seeing the paper sticking up over the wall where it used to be. My quirks are showing!

I also put my Spinning rack on the desk top as well. I still have enough room to lay out my Project Life binder and have a little bit of work space still.

That drawer unit right it the middle under my desk is always in my way but I need the storage so I just work around it. I usually end up rolling my chair right there and scooching up to it which is why I have the problem with the mat and the carpet. This is usually when I end up rolling off the mat.

Here is a look at the shelf area after.  All clean and tidy, just the way I like it.  You can see I have my paper trimmer and Project Life album leaning against the wall on the right.

My husband and I discussed building a shelf unit for this space it would  run the length of the wall and be as deep as the space would allow.  It would be a run of two shelves.  For now moving this existing shelf was a way to determine if having something there would make the space too small or be in the way of my chair.  So far its been great, I could definitely use the space.  So more on that later.

Here is a closer look at the shelf.

On the top I have a muffin tin that I just got yesterday at the dollar store, it holds small doo-dads like paper clips, paper flags, tabs, etc. I also plan to fill on of the slots with confetti that I hope to cut out today.

Next to it are some plastic drawers that hold other supplies, like tags, label stickers and small chipboard pieces.

The plastic bin next to it was from the dollar spot at Target, I went back yesterday and got a few more. This one holds my Project Life cards. The small sections are perfect for the 3x4 cards and the long area holds the 6x4 cards. I made dividers for them so they were easy to identify. My old Creative Memories paper trimmer sits beside.

The middle shelf holds books , the orange box from Ikea holds my spooled ribbon. The two other plastic bins from Target hold my clear stamps. I also got the cute plastic cups from the dollar section at Target, they hold my sharpies and other markers.

On the bottom shelf I have a metal pail is a catch all for stuff I don't want to toss out yet, and some wipes from the Dollar Tree to clean my stamps. The mesh basket holds miscellaneous tags and labels and the other mesh bin holds larger elements and letter stickers and all my Smash tags and other stuff.

Here's a look at my rolling rack all filled in.  I moved a lot of stuff that used to be in bins on the black shelf here, like my wooden stamps, stamp pads, rolling stamps, ribbon, tape, clear stamp blocks, punches, glitter, mists and stickles.  I can totally see why others got more than one.  What a great piece!

Steps away from my desk area is our bonus room.  Here I have two Expedit shelf units that happily fit perfectly below the windows.  Here I have a lot of craft books, my old photos are stored here my paper is here, the large bins at the bottom hold small albums, coils for my bind it all, rubber stamps, my tool box, lots of stuff.  The vintage typewriter I got from Craigslist is on top ready to go when I need it.  I need to make a dust cover for it soon.

This room also houses a TV and DVD player, Simone plays in here a lot and watches movies. It's also where my husband likes to escape to watch the news so it's really a multi-purpose room used by everyone. We found the white velvet chair on clearance at Macys and the tweed ottomon was found at Home Goods, its opens up and we use it to store Simone's toys. The small table and lamp are from Ikea awhile ago.  This is also where I photograph my Project Life album each week.  I lay it out on the ottomon because the windows to the left give nice natural light in the morning and I tend to avoid glares on the page protectors when I photograph it in the morning.  You may have noticed the tweed background in some of the photos.

To the right of the Expedit's on the opposite wall to the windows is my old desk that we had it our last house.  The drawer on the bottom right holds old paper but pretty much Simone has taken this over.  She colors here and plays so it's a big mess.  I need to revamp this area and will probably do so soon.  The top shelf holds more mementos and photos.

I would love to have both areas together but I use my computer so much in my crafting especially with photo editing and digital scrapbooking that I tend to spend most of my time at my desk.

One day I may move into the bonus room totally, maybe when Simone is older and needs a desk for homework but that's well down the road, so for now I'm using both spaces.  One more for storage and one for the actual work.

I hope you've enjoyed my little tour, have a wonderful weekend!