The Remodeled Life: small office

If you are like us, there really just isn't a lot of extra space in your house - especially for things like a home office. Because of limited space we have to be creative about how we use every inch - especially for things like paperwork, mail, office supplies, etc. Those things can take over your home quickly if you let it - and I'm speaking from experience here. I have absolutely loved taking a little time during each week to start getting our whole house organized. For us, we decided to take it a little bit at a time - so we wouldn't get overwhelmed and just give up. This has been the best way for us - we are actually getting organized and so far have really stuck with it. Its been easy - way easier than expected. So today I wanted to show you our completed "home office" - which is really a little desk area in our kitchen. Its now organized and ready to actually be of use instead of being avoided.

So lets go back for a minute and remember the original state of this deak - it was a disaster. The mail and paperwork runneth over. I got to work by emptying everything out and sorting through all of the paperwork and little items that were shoved in. You can find my post on sorting through the piles of clutter here.

Now all of the shoved in paper work has order and has been filed away in a pretty file box - which gave tons of space for actual office type supplies like envelopes, notebooks, clips, etc.

I'm so excited about this desk now - I like to just walk by and open it every now and again just to look at all the organized goodness. Oh, I also lined the bottom with some scrap book paper and ended up painting a few places inside the desk, just to pretty it up a bit.

Another part of this task was also to clear out and organize the little drawer. It was filled with junk - just like most drawers in our house (but we are working on it!) Here's the before and after:

Just like the top, everything was cleared out and sorted through. Some things were thrown away because it was just junk, some things were returned to its proper place and some things went back in. I found some pretty wrapping paper (Target) to line the drawer with and some interlocking trays (from Homegoods) to organize everything when it went back in.

Another addition was this mail sorter for the top of the desk. One section is for incoming mail and one is for outgoing. I found the little notebook and mail sorter at Homegoods as well. The notebook was $2 and the mail sorter was $5.99 - not much of an investment for something that will be a huge game changer for us.

I love that you can find pretty office and organization supplies these days.

Well, I think we can call this project complete for now. For under $20 and a few hours time we now have a functional, organized and pretty home office space. I.love.this.

I'm linking up with Jen at I Heart Organizing and her Home Office Challenge. Jen is like the queen of organization, I love her blog and have gotten a ton of inspiration and ideas from her. If you have been on the organization wave like me, you should definitely go check her out!!

Thanks for stopping by today! I hope everyone has been safe as the strong storms have come through. Have a great day!