I'm Organizing My Office in 29 Days

As you probably know if you read my blog regularly, on Mondays I link up with Laura at I'm an Organizing Junkie to share my menu plan from the previous week. Well, she sucked me into a 29-day organizing challenge. That's right. I actually hemmed and hawed about doing it, and then after I decided I needed a push to organize something in my house, I hemmed and hawed about what space to actually organize.

Um, you would have thought it was obvious:

You walk through the door and look to the left. There are stacks of papers on top of the file cabinet. I sit on a really nasty pillow, some baby clothes, and an empty pillow case every time I nurse Little M. There are 2 sound machines on the shelves to the left. I stub my toe on the crate peeking out from under the shelves every time I nurse Little M.

Look to the left. The armoire is missing a knob on the drawer, making it difficult to open (so of course nothing goes in there and it just gets piled up on the shelves). Look at the wires. The papers piled up on the shredder that's hiding on the floor to the right of the armoire. There are papers and plastic falling out of the too-small garbage can.

Look to the right of the glider. A boppy, a book, a matchbox car, and a sweatshirt have fallen into the abyss and stayed there.

Keep turning to the right. This happens to also be Little M's bedroom (until I can move him in with Baby T). The bed is never made, and there are blankets instead of curtains. The pictures on the wall are crooked.

Turning to the right a little more, there is the bookshelf that's overflowing with papers and...stuff.

Even Little M thinks I need to do something with all this crap. He chose today to pull it all down from the shelves.

I know. It's embarrassing. And slightly disgusting. This is my office--my space to organize my business and personal paperwork. I don't spend much time in this room, but it's Little M's room and the guest room when people visit. I need to be able to actually find things. And to feel a little less embarrassed when guests stay here. The room needs some major help.

So here I go...

I have a list that includes:

• Get a bigger garbage can
• Organize armoire drawers
• Get longer screw for armoire knob
• Cover cereal boxes with burlap for work paperwork
• File/organize old documents (there is an empty beer case filled with old paperwork under the armoire).
• Rearrange room
• Fix wire situation behind armoire
• Make curtains
• Fix the artwork in the room.
• Put shelves on wall for photos
• Cover pillow on glider
• Organize armoire shelves

I started today by quickly removing all the junk that didn't belong in the room: the matchbox car,  the sweatshirt, the towel on the floor.

Then, I tackled the mail organizer that was overflowing with papers on top of the bookshelf. I brought it into the kitchen so I could have more room to work.

It basically entailed a lot of throwing away. I also pawned 3 small bags and a bunch of little lotions off on my friends. This was the final product:

It's a start.