Wednesday 17 April 2013

April Organize-A-Rama: You Call That an Office?

So, April's apparently half over already? Someone clearly neglected to tell me! I've been working on a few areas, getting them organized, or functioning better, so first up was one area that didn't really take all that long, but has made a pretty big difference so far. That would our "office". We don't don't have a dedicated home office space (yet). But we do have a desk in the corner of our bedroom that we can use as a makeshift office for the interim. His name is Shakey...because if you look at it wrong it could fall over - it's that sturdy, but he does the trick for now.


Sorry about the crappy phone pictures the in-laws have my camera and it was night time) Please pretend that the light is in fact finished and hanging proudly, illuminating the room; instead of unceremoniously slumped half finished and half forgotten in the corner. (While you're pretending the ball of folded paper isn't there, you can also go ahead and imagine that that duct work is enclosed nicely) Now, moving on the desk. It's not particularly unorganized, it's something that's just not really living up to it's full potential. While a light sneeze may bring ol' Shakey down without warning, he still really wants to pull his weight, and help us stay on top of our bills, and taxes, and magazines, and what not. The cords are a big pain in my you know what, and since the desk top doesn't work (and hasn't for close to 6 months) they can finally disappear! We needed a central "hub" for billing and other paperwork, so I wasn't running all over the house trying to find where I'd stored things when we needed them. Plus keeping on top of bills is rather important, because companies can get a little testy when you don't pay on time - and "I lost my bill in a mountain of random paperwork" doesn't really fly with them.
   After about two hours of organizing (actually it was more like 1.5 hours of tracking everything down and about a half hour of organizing) Shakey now looks like this:


Not too shabby of a makeover eh? And yes, it is essential that you be watching Dr. Who whilst organizing. We got rid of the non working desk top and put the laptop up there. Unfortunately we don't have wireless because we're pretty technology illiterate, and our wireless router wouldn't work for some reason when we moved, so we have a massive 100ft internet cord that we just traipse all over the house when we need to move. So coiling it up keeps it out of our way. Bianca the hippo is an excellent note holder for all the corny little notes we like to write each other, and the calendar clipped to the wall tracks all our bills - when they come out, how much that kind of thing.


100 nerd points if you can name what Dr. Who episode I was watching. I plan on adding a cork board (I thought I'd have enough left over from a project, but alas, I didn't) and probably a larger calendar. As for underneath, we've got everything there now, at the reach of our fingertips. Sorted and stored and pretty looking.


I've got all my magazines, which I reference often, I went through them all and threw out ones that I deemed no longer relevant, and took out pages in ones that only had a few nice things - which ended up in the blue binder - that's where I keep track of all the house stuff. (Inspiration, layouts, budgeting, etc.) The green binder I is pretty self explanatory, it's a house for all those called Manuel. Every time I see (or hear) the word manual, I think of Wall-E, when the captain doesn't realize it's a book. "Operate Manuel. Manuel, relay instructions." (Check it out...funny) White file thingy has all our current tax stuff, receipts, papers all that jazz (because we're bad, and still haven't filed yet - still have time). The red binder has the recipes I ripped out of magazines that I then got rid of (can I get a woot woot for throwing out 20lbs of old magazines), it's also where I do our menu planning.


These files house all our important paperwork. Our banking stuff, insurance stuff, travel plans for future trips, medical stuff, yada, yada, yada. The purple ones have all our paid bills stored for tax purposes (two months at a time) and previous years taxes.
   That cleared up paper from all over the house, and has helped my piece of mind, knowing where all our important papers are - so hopefully nothing else gets lost. That crosses one thing of my list, and I'm currently working on the our closet and the blue room, so hopefully those should both be done by this weekend.

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