I know you’ve seen the traditional “Blogger’s Office” all over the but here is something a bit different.  I want to share with you my “Home Office” and think it might be a bit more realistic for many of you. This little project Home Office has been in the works for some time now but keeps getting put on the back burner. But not any more and I’m excited to share it with you!

With three children still at home, the luxury of an empty room to use as a dedicated office is not really in the cards for me.  I did have a built in desk/hutch in our kitchen before we remodeled but it was always distracting when I needed to be cooking or really anything else!

I also could have combined it with the guest room as some do but I didn’t want to be upstairs.  The solution for me:  A pretty desk in our living room and retrofitting the deep hall closet for all my stuff.  Tonia of Sorted Out helped me with the entire process.  We’ve worked together on my Master Closet and have a few other things in the works as well.

Our first step was to look at my space, how I worked, everything I needed access to and talk about work flow.  I was trying to store everything in the two small cabinets in the living room but mostly covering the top of my desk(25% off now!) and then overflowing other places.  Not a great look when my desk is one of the first things you see from my front door.

Because I work from home and have typical home-related things, we decided to use the two small cabinets in the living room for home-related things like stationery, passports, etc.  I have a pretty large entry hall closet that extends both ways under our front and back staircase that was very poorly organized.  Tonia thought this was the perfect space to really house all of my office/work things.

She contacted Rhonda at Closet Envy to meet with us to look at the space and together maximize the space under the stairs. Closet Envy is a closet designer and manufacturer that uses extremely high-quality product and has great customization options. Rhonda took measurements and created a CAD drawing of the cabinet and rolling shelf unit we agreed would allow me to be organized and keep track of items coming in for the blog as well as home and family-related items.

Closet Envy created a wonderful 4 door cabinet for one wall with lots of shelves.  The best part of this cabinet might be the lighting they installed.  It really makes a huge difference!  The rolling cabinet is deep and the shelves are tall so that I can put PR boxes and other blog-related things here instead of on the floor in my “office.”  Behind the cabinet are tubs of photographs waiting to be put in scrapbooks.  I’m only 9 years behind!

Once the cabinet and rolling shelf unit was installed, Tonia and her team came back to help me get truly organized.  I love that we were able to carry through the navy and hot pink color scheme from my home into this new space.  It really makes it feel like a “room.”  Opening the doors to get my files or office supplies makes me so happy now!

We used these navy and white printed file boxes which have been discontinued but I found (similar) ones here and labeled them accordingly.  There is one for the girls school files, my business files, home files, etc.  I love these white drawer boxes!  They help me keep things sorted…and give my hubby and girls a place to put things for me instead of piling them on my desk!  The rolling cabinet has three drawers for beauty samples for me to try and all the goodies I sent to readers, too!  (Just register for the newsletter and leave comments on blog posts and you just might receive a gift!)

This new system also helps me to be organized and to clean off my desk each Friday so that my office is “closed” for the weekend.  I’m very much a see it, do it person and I’m really trying to keep work hours when possible.

So now here are a few before photos… Please be kind as you were with the closet.  I’m being honest here!

Now for the amazing after!

It is so very nice to sit at my desk now.  I hadn’t used it in MONTHS because it was such a disaster and overwhelming.  Tonia is an amazing organizer and always so wonderful to work with.  Each woman on her team is the ultimate organizer as well.  I’m blessed to partner with them!

Happy Organizing!

xo

Alicia

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