As I mentioned in a previous post, last weekend saw some major progress on the organising front in casa mia.
We finally got the unit in the dining room built, so forged ahead with getting it filled with all the dishes that have been dumped in the den since the kitchen makeover - we purposely decided that dishes that we only use for special occasions would be kept in the dining room, leaving storage in the kitchen for everyday dishes.
I'll be posting about the dining room progress another day.
The other significant area we worked on was the study. In the epic post showing the house BEFORE, I mentioned that I had given the study a bit of a mini-makeover when I got frustrated with the lack of progress on other projects. However it didn't get completely finished and since then things have lapsed just a little:
More rubbish has been piled on the desk and I haven't made any progress sorting out the stuff that was already there!
I decided at the weekend that I'd had enough. There was so much rubbish on the desk I couldn't work there so I've had to resort to either working in the kitchen or sitting on my bed with my laptop on my knee - frustrating.
So I cleared all the rubbish from the desk and also out of the bookcase/display cabinet and the desk drawers (as per this post, no pics of that part of the process - sorry!).
I had decided that the colour scheme in the display section of the bookcase would be pale wood, gold and white and I shopped the house for items rather than going out to get anything new. I was actually shocked by how much I managed to get my hands on, and the display cabinet now looks like this:
I've been collecting white vases for years - they've been dotted around the house - but I think they look nice grouped together in the cabinet. The boxes were on display in the Den in its previous reincarnation (is that right, can you have a reincarnation in the past?!?!) as the Study as you can see here:
One of the main things I was keen to change in the study was to make it look less office-y (as in the above pic) and more pretty. My theory is that just because a room's main purpose is functional, doesn't mean that it can't be an attractive space to be in too.
With that theory in mind, I made the decision that wherever possible, the functional items would be stored away in drawers or cabinets, so no pen pots or filing trays on the desk, etc. Also the filing cabinets and the printer are in a built-in cupboard, so they're out of sight too.
Back to the bookcase - the bottom of it has wooden doors, so it is more for storage than display. I had been needing somewhere to store printer paper and envelopes, so I got some silver mesh office supplies from Ryman:
Here there are in situ:
The letter tray holds spare envelopes in the top drawer, A4 paper in the middle one and notebooks in the bottom one. The regularly used envelope sizes are in the letter rack on the right hand side. Behind the letter rack I've put an old storage box from Ikea on its side and put my favourite series of travel books in there (AA Spiral Guides) - I refer to them quite a lot - for inspiration for future holidays and to reminisce about past trips.
Above the letter tray on the left is a couple of folders that hold magazine clippings. I do plan at some point to scan these and store them electronically (Evernote?) but I know it will be a huge undertaking, so for now its a pending project.
The little blue folder above the magazine clippings is what I use when I go on holiday for travel itineraries and information. Its a nice neat size to store useful stuff we might need to refer to during a trip.
On the rather empty bottom shelf the box has 12 sections and I use it with my Mission Control (Household Manual) for birthday cards. One of the sheets in my Mission Control Planner Section is a note of the dates of all birthdays, anniversaries etc and I tend to buy a bulk of cards for the year and organise them into the appropriate month, using my planner to let me know which events are coming up and when to send them out. Mission Control is a post for another day...
I'm always really impressed with myself when I can do a bit of organisation and end up with an empty shelf or drawer - major feeling of satisfaction that some unnecessary clutter has been cleared.
Here's a pic of the whole cabinet in all its organised glory:
I also made some progress on the nightmare desk, that's coming up in Study Progress - Part Two.
I'll be posting about the dining room progress another day.
The other significant area we worked on was the study. In the epic post showing the house BEFORE, I mentioned that I had given the study a bit of a mini-makeover when I got frustrated with the lack of progress on other projects. However it didn't get completely finished and since then things have lapsed just a little:
More rubbish has been piled on the desk and I haven't made any progress sorting out the stuff that was already there!
I decided at the weekend that I'd had enough. There was so much rubbish on the desk I couldn't work there so I've had to resort to either working in the kitchen or sitting on my bed with my laptop on my knee - frustrating.
So I cleared all the rubbish from the desk and also out of the bookcase/display cabinet and the desk drawers (as per this post, no pics of that part of the process - sorry!).
I had decided that the colour scheme in the display section of the bookcase would be pale wood, gold and white and I shopped the house for items rather than going out to get anything new. I was actually shocked by how much I managed to get my hands on, and the display cabinet now looks like this:
I've been collecting white vases for years - they've been dotted around the house - but I think they look nice grouped together in the cabinet. The boxes were on display in the Den in its previous reincarnation (is that right, can you have a reincarnation in the past?!?!) as the Study as you can see here:
One of the main things I was keen to change in the study was to make it look less office-y (as in the above pic) and more pretty. My theory is that just because a room's main purpose is functional, doesn't mean that it can't be an attractive space to be in too.
With that theory in mind, I made the decision that wherever possible, the functional items would be stored away in drawers or cabinets, so no pen pots or filing trays on the desk, etc. Also the filing cabinets and the printer are in a built-in cupboard, so they're out of sight too.
Back to the bookcase - the bottom of it has wooden doors, so it is more for storage than display. I had been needing somewhere to store printer paper and envelopes, so I got some silver mesh office supplies from Ryman:
Here there are in situ:
The letter tray holds spare envelopes in the top drawer, A4 paper in the middle one and notebooks in the bottom one. The regularly used envelope sizes are in the letter rack on the right hand side. Behind the letter rack I've put an old storage box from Ikea on its side and put my favourite series of travel books in there (AA Spiral Guides) - I refer to them quite a lot - for inspiration for future holidays and to reminisce about past trips.
Above the letter tray on the left is a couple of folders that hold magazine clippings. I do plan at some point to scan these and store them electronically (Evernote?) but I know it will be a huge undertaking, so for now its a pending project.
The little blue folder above the magazine clippings is what I use when I go on holiday for travel itineraries and information. Its a nice neat size to store useful stuff we might need to refer to during a trip.
On the rather empty bottom shelf the box has 12 sections and I use it with my Mission Control (Household Manual) for birthday cards. One of the sheets in my Mission Control Planner Section is a note of the dates of all birthdays, anniversaries etc and I tend to buy a bulk of cards for the year and organise them into the appropriate month, using my planner to let me know which events are coming up and when to send them out. Mission Control is a post for another day...
I'm always really impressed with myself when I can do a bit of organisation and end up with an empty shelf or drawer - major feeling of satisfaction that some unnecessary clutter has been cleared.
Here's a pic of the whole cabinet in all its organised glory:
I also made some progress on the nightmare desk, that's coming up in Study Progress - Part Two.
No comments:
Post a Comment