Office Organization

Yesterday, we built IKEA shelves for our office closet, which before was kind of a black hole of disorganization. I can ignore messy clutter for a long, LONG, L-O-N-G time, but there comes a point when my brain’s like NOPE and it has to be fixed.

That was this weekend.

Unfortunately, starting any project like this means taking everything out of the closet, spreading the clutter all over the rest of the room (and bathroom, in this case, since it’s the closest other room with space to stack boxes).

And every project leads to seventeen more. Because our office is really just a bedroom, it had a clothes rod and shelf that had to come out. Then we found there wasn’t any wall paint behind the shelf because it’d been there since the house was built, so I had to go find the painting stuff and hastily patch it up.

Then we realized we were going to have to build the shelf frames in the closet because they wouldn’t clear the door.

But, we were victorious… mostly. 😂 We still need some pretty boxes to organize things, so most of the stuff hasn’t been put away yet, but the main pieces are in. Behold!

A picture of the new shelves and drawers in our office closet, still mostly empty.
Still mostly empty, but getting there!

Some of the shelves were out of stock, so we have to wait for a restock. The project is really only half done, but we made a lot of progress in a single day. So much so, in fact, that I’m sore today from all the lifting and carrying and bending and twisting.

Oh, and before I fell into an organizational hole, I absolutely devoured T. Kingfisher’s Clockwork Boys and The Wonder Engine. A forger, an assassin, a fallen paladin, and a scholar go on a not entirely voluntary quest to save their city from destruction by clockwork warriors. It’s a delight! I’m now reading Swordheart, which is set in the same world, and I’m enjoying it just as much. If you missed these when they came out, check out a sample!

And let me know if you’ve read anything fantastic lately. Or tackled any organizational projects of your own. We can celebrate/commiserate together. :)

11 thoughts on “Office Organization”

  1. I can relate to the organizing when it’s absolutely necessary. I reorganized my kitchen starting in March. I moved a small industrial shelf to the other side of my kitchen to make room to move another set of shelves. Not only did I have to move everything off the shelves, I had to redo the height of the shelves. I had to stop because my back started to spasm on me.
    About a month ago, I finished the entire reorganization process. I lifted heavy enameled cast iron pots, glass bowls, measuring cups, and much more. Then I had to put up two separate, 5 tiered shelves. I almost gave up. However, after much cursing, I got them up with height adjustments for each shelf. It looks great now.

  2. I feel with you, it never ends with the original intention to do x. There is always a y in preparation and a z that follows. Must be a universal law?
    We are renovating the bathrooms, sigh. That is actually done by people who do this for a living as opposed to us. We are only moving things around so they have a room to work and keep their gear and prepare access to those rooms. Meaning strategic decisions of what things one might need from a room that cannot be accessed for three weeks and where to move the home office workstation while the room is used as a staging area and where to put everything else in the meantime. And then reversing everything afterwards.
    The office shelving looks great and I hope the missing parts are available soon.

  3. Oooh I love these books, The Clockwork Boys was hilarious, and you still have Paladin’s Grace and Paladin’s Strength to look forward to in the same serie, I hope you love them :D
    I also read A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking and Minor Mage by T. Kingfisher, there is a sentient dough starter in one and a talking armadillo in the other :)

  4. Reorganizing our (previously) useless hall closet was our first pandemic project. It was a dank, dark, depressing space with utterly useless shelving that we’d already lived with for 20 yrs. We needed a place to hang the charger for our brand new cordless Dyson vac so we pulled everything out, painted it bright white, put up lighting, hung the charging station, and put up all new shelves. I can’t believe the difference!

    The current project is a complete remodel of our tiny (4×8) master bath. We are do-it-yourselfers, which is great on the budget, but means that projects don’t ever get done on a timely basis. We stripped it down to the studs, rebuilt everything, and it’s only cost us about $5K, but we are now on month 6 and counting LOL. I have hope, though, that it will actually be finished in the next couple of weeks, and it looks great!

    1. Wow, six months is quite the project! We can do basic DIY stuff, but I’m going to leave a whole bathroom remodel to the pros—I know when I’m in over my head. :)

      I hope your project gets done soon and you love it!

  5. Ooh! T. Kingfisher is one of the names of Ursula Vernon, one of my favorite children’s authors! Her Harriet Hamster Princess and Dragonbreath series were a huge hit with my kids and me. I have one of their short story collections but haven’t read a full-length novel under the Kingfisher name. I’ll have to check it out.

    After you’re done with your office closet, would you like to come do mine? My office is actually in a closet, which makes for cramped quarters and a very dense setup. It’s not a walk in closet, but one of those long and shallow ones (10’ wide and 2’ deep) with sliding doors.

    1. After I’m done with my closet, I’m going to lie on the floor and recover for a few days, lol. I’ve seen some incredible “cloffice” spaces in photos, but I fear I’m not that handy or that creative—hence the IKEA shelves. :)

  6. I love T. Kingfisher. I’ve read all her stuff and some of the things she wrote under her real name Ursula Vernon. The Clockwork Boys/Wonder Engine books were fantastic. A Wizard’s Guide To Defensive Baking is also a delight.

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