There’s no way to get around it – re-doing your home office is work.  I estimated it would take a week to complete the job.

I had a list of what needed to be done. I determined which I could do alone and when I would need help. It was a challenge, and sometimes a huge pain in the neck, but the result was worth it!

 

Moving Stuff Out

• Lighten the load. Even professional organizers can have too many things.  Yikes!  The bookcase and file cabinet were packed with stuff.  It was a great opportunity to shed some weight and keep only what I really needed.

• Keep only what you need. Furniture takes up a lot of room.  Duh, right?  Make sure each piece is serving a function.  An office isn’t the place for an extra coffee table.

 

Fixing The Room

• Prep is key. Gawd, I hate to wash walls and sand window frames. But I knew that proper preparation would make the painted walls look better and last longer.  So I scrubbed with TSP, spackled nail holes, and scraped old flaking paint before I re-painted.

• Sometimes you have to crawl.  My plan to move the desk to the opposite wall meant I had to re-arrange power cords and computer connections.  I found out from my DSL provider that  the modem should be no further than 12 feet from the jack.  The shortest distance between two points is a straight line so into the crawl space I crept to pull the line under the floor.

  

• Who ya gonna call?  My friend MJD is a whiz with power tools and a fearless handyperson.  Who better to help me hang the critical horizontal track for the shelving unit – the only hardware affixed to the wall.   It needed to be absolutely level and securely installed.  The instructions were clear, and even though we never found a wall stud, the drywall anchor screws did the job.  Hanging the shelves were a breeze.

 

Putting Stuff Back

• How did this all fit?  Why does stuff seem to expand when unpacked?  I now had more linear inches of shelving, but why didn’t I have extra room?  Well I did.  Before I had books and supplies jammed in the bookcase on top of each other.  Arranging the shelves so everything was visible and accessible took more space.  In fact, the space I now had was perfect.

• 

  Does it look nice?  The shelving is the first thing you see when you enter the office.  If it was visually cluttered, the whole room would feel cluttered.  I bought a few new containers and re-purposed others to keep the shelves clear of “little stuff.” I balanced the arrangement of books and binders on the shelves.  I moved my current project files off the desktop and onto an adjacent shelf, creating a clear, uncluttered writing surface.  Everything looks harmonious.

• But does it work? Yes, yes, and again yes!  The makeover accomplished my goals and I love working in my new office. The result is exactly as planned. Sometimes I just stand in the doorway and admire it.  Yay, me!

 

Next: Lessons Learned