De-Clutter Your Home Office

Holy mackerel! I barely survived the trip under my desk this month, what with the vigorous dust bunnies and venomous spiders under there. But it was important for the sake of this blog, so I persevered.

If anyone is keeping track, which I'm sure you are (Hi Mom!), I was supposed to tackle the garage this month. But hourly blizzards and ice storms have made it less than appealing to trek out to our unheated detached garage to untangle jump ropes. Hopefully we'll experience a warm up by Independence Day.

It was warmer—if not safer—to tuck under my desk, where years-worth of junk had accumulated. I started as I always do with these big projects: I pulled everything out into the middle of the room. Then I dusted and cleaned under there.

Before

The biggest chore was shredding. Everyone should have a home shredder at this point in the identity-theft crisis, and it should be as powerful as you can afford. Mine is a Fellowes PS60-2, which I got at Office Depot for about $80. I put it to the test with old story files and checks. Several bags went to the recycling bin. Speaking of paper security, I also added a fireproof lock box (First Alert; $40 at Sams Club) to store our monthly bills, current checkbook, and passports. It's no fun to stub my toes on, but it does offer more peace of mind than our rickety file cabinet.

I have an extensive library of magazines that I use as reference materials for my work as a freelance writer. I also have some published pieces in them that I hope to someday share with/torture my children. I spent a couple of hours culling out what I really had to keep, and placing the issues in IKEA's Kassett cardboard boxes ($6.99 for a set of 2). The rest I recycled and donated to school for kids' art projects. They fit perfectly under my desk, which is an old library table I bought at a secondhand store. When I brought it home years ago, it was a little short for today's ergonomic office chairs and computer keyboards. So I added large casters to the legs.

After

That goofy piece of vintage luggage under there? It's not an emergency overnight bag. It's where I store stationary. The perfect size for boxes of notecards, it has a handle so the kids can tote it around when they write to thank Grandma for a birthday present.

The white bins hold bulky paint fan decks (for work) and recycling. A professional home organizer once told me you should have a recycling bin on every floor of your house to catch all those toothpaste boxes and toilet paper tubes that may not make it downstairs to the main bin.

You'll also notice the exercise ball is still there. It gathers the most dust of anything.

Organize the Pantry

BEFORE

For this month's feat of storage and organization, I tackled the pantry. I met a woman recently who told me she had just spent the morning repainting her pantry. Immediately, I was insanely jealous. Not of the painting, because I hate that chore, but that she would have a pantry large enough to need painting. Nothing like that at my house. Though, all things considered, this cabinet at the top of the steps from our side door is ample. I just needed to get it sorted out. 

AFTER

As you know, a lot of organizing comes down to paring down and sorting. I run a fairly tight ship (though I did find two bottles of Triple Sec and one was verrrry vintage), so sorting was the priority. First, I pulled everything out to the kitchen counters and wiped down the shelves.

1. I took all the popcorn accoutrements—the air popper parts and bowls—and combined it with the salt, butter topping, and unpopped kernels in a big plastic bin in another cabinet. 

2. Then I culled down the kid's candy basket, which is where all the Halloween, Easter, and birthday party piñata goodies go. My kids don't eat a lot of it, so it tends to build up. This was easy to limit. The basket I had leftover now corrals lunch thermoses and reusable bags. 

3. The other big trouble spot was my coffee supplies. Maybe I shouldn't boast about a "tight ship" in this area. I was able to get the variety of grounds, a stovetop espresso pot, tea supplies and a tea pot cozy, and extra filters in the large bin on the top shelf. A surplus coffee maker and my carafe had to go next to it. I'm clearly a fan of big bins. I can't stand having to move five small items to find something I need. Better to pull out one bin, I think. I use plastic shoeboxes, cardboard boxes, lasagna pans, anything that slides or stacks and holds lots of items.

4. Finally, I set up a small spare pantry on a shelf in the basement where I can put warehouse-size bags of chips, big boxes of cereal, and flats of chicken broth. They simply aren't made for the size of my pantry. And they aren't something I use every day, so I don't mind trekking to the basement to restock. A professional organizer once told me to only keep on hand only what I use EVERY day. It's a hard discipline. But it frees a lot of space in my cupboards when I can put the bread machine, wok, and waffle maker on shelves in the basement. 

4. After that, it was a simple matter of grouping food types and raising or lowering shelves as needed to accommodate stacks of patio ware and large oatmeal containers. 

I wish you similar sorting success!

Create a Wrapping Center

Voilà! Just 6 days after posting a plan of action for the New Year, I have completed the first item! Not bad! (OK, I'm finished congratulating myself now. You may continue reading...)







Here's the old (1920s or ’30s?) hand-me-down armoire that was stocked messily with leftover boxes, unused toys, and art kits.






Open up and see all the features:

1

A laundry sorter (1) holds wrapping paper rolls. Be sure to pick a straight-sided one so the rolls don't get pinched at the bottom. A special note: I'd like to thank Dollar General for always supplying me with inexpensive storage helpers. I stocked up for the year and everything I used here cost less than $20 total. 

2

3

A mesh shower organizer (2) sorts fabric ribbon bits. I can't throw loose pieces away, but this box (3) was a mess. I turned on an Ina Garten cooking show and sat down to untangle the snare. After I coiled them up, I tucked them into the pockets sorted roughly by color. The mesh construction means I can pull ribbon bits through the holes if I need to just snip off a short piece. Also, it flattens when I close the armoire door. 

4

A desk caddy (4) contains the scissors, packing tape, gift tags, and Sharpies® I use—as well as the tape dispenser my daughter thoughtfully decorated with a My Little Pony sticker. By the way, if you don't have one of these old-school weighty dispensers, get one! It makes gift wrapping so much easier. Forget those nifty hand gadgets, which I find awkward and too lightweight to dispense properly. 

When I've pored over magazine pages and Pinterest boards looking for wrapping centers, I've admired the way tension rods or dowels can secure rolls of ribbons. That may come later. 

5

The drawers (5) hold gift bags—sorted by holiday and non-holiday—as well as decorative tins and boxes that I sometimes need. If you don't have a spare huge armoire (Chances are you don't even want a 2-ton behemoth like it. I happen to love it, but I'm weird that way), you can create the same effect in a closet using plastic drawer bins. Or, look for a garage-sale armoire or inexpensive entertainment center to convert.

6

The toys were culled and bundled. Some of them were sentimental keepsakes, so I put them in a big  Rubbermaid box and stowed them in a cabinet under the stairs. The kids played like never before with what was left ("New toys!" being the same as "I haven't seen these in ages!"). And now I can close the doors (6) on a tidy corner of my home.

New Year -- Organizing Plans

Happy New Year!

That's a direct quote from my holiday cards this year, which, as you can tell, didn't make it to the post office at the crack of Advent.

Partly that was due to pre-holiday events that caught up our family in a snare of health concerns. And partly that was because I have never gotten the damned address labels created, so the task of hand-writing all those envelopes takes on mountainous proportions in my mind. Hence, I easily slid it down my to-do list and tucked it behind "refill soap dispensers."

That labeling chore is one of those things that nags at me. I never finish it, but I can't let it go. This time of year, all those things bubble to the surface of my mind. I get the itch to sort out piles, accomplish tasks, cross off lists, and organize. I think every January post I've written since starting this blog has been about organizing or sorting. Spoiler alert: This year will be no different. The lovely holidays, which are so fun and festive but also come with ground-in cookie crumbs, patterned dinnerware in need of a home, and tangled light strands that only half work, seem to sow this compulsion in me. But I can't blame it all on the holidays. I'm an organizer at heart, and for me, the start of a new year blooms visions of neatly folded towels and tidy coils of wrapping ribbon the way some people conjure tight abs and skinny thighs.

To that end, I am coming up with a plan for each month of 2013 that hopefully will result in a better functioning home for our family. When we moved into this house three years ago, I stowed stuff wherever I could, as quickly as I could. Moves are so traumatic that way. And this house is not blessed with storage. So, consequently, we have baby mementoes on all three levels, even though the kids are 9 and 6. We have the wedding album stashed in the attic but all the family albums in the TV room. Don't get me started on why I have three crock pots (all of which I use, by the way) wedged into three different cupboards. It's the kind of thing that puts my teeth on edge.

Here's the start of the plan. It's open-ended with reason: I suspect that tampering with these dysfunctional spaces will reveal even more dysfunction, which I can add to the bottom of the list.

Feel free to join my efforts. I promise to offer my usual tips for doing things on the cheap. Or, just take the ride with me. I will surely provide a few laughs at my expense, plus you'll get tantalizing peeks into my cupboards and drawers.

JANUARY -- Turn this armoire into a wrapping center



















FEBRUARY -- Sort out this pantry

MARCH -- Wrangle the toys and tools in the garage

APRIL -- Deal with this toe-busting pile under my desk

MAY -- The Attic, part 1



















JUNE -- The Attic, part 2

JULY et al -- TBD