Office/Guest Room Make-Over Part 1

I have an office/guest room in my apartment. Well its really my parents apartment that my sister and I rent since they live in a different city. We live in our home town and my parents and little sister live in the capital. The third bedroom in the apartment is their "space" for when they come to visit, but I use it as my "office" crafts room because I have a tiny bedroom. I had to mention this because they had to be a big part of the process. I guess you could look at me as an interior designer. I had to get their permission before doing any big stuff.

Here is a before picture taken from the door. Sorry about the mess. 

The lay-out really wasn't working for me anymore. I decided to make a scale model so I could easily rearrange without having to move the furniture. When I found a lay-out I liked I then moved the furniture around.

I have always found this room quite boring, very white (not my style). I told them about a dream I had that I painted the entire room green. They where shocked! That would NEVER happen. Well I convinced them to paint one wall a colour of their choice, blue or grey. Then I convinced them to paint two walls - the ones around the bed. While my parents were visiting one weekend my mum and I went to buy paint. She ended up choosing green. After they had gone I painted two of the walls green. It just did not look right. After having a video call with my parents we agreed - read I convinced them - to let me paint all the walls.

And so I did.

I also changed from black to white bedding, added black boxes in the bookcase, removed some of the laundry system, removed the curtains, added a side table for the printer and removed the shelves over the desk. I also spray painted the candle holders purple.

I am so happy with the results. I am not quite done yet though. I still have a lot more organizing to do. I might spray paint the end table purple. I am going to make some art for the wall and make some pillows. I am also going to buy new towel sets.

10 Organized Home Office

Today's inspirational post is on home offices. Home offices must not - and should not - be uninspiring. In my opinion a home office should be where you feel inspired and motivated to do your work. You might get inspired by pastel colours, bright colours or no colour, decorate what inspires you!

Here I have found 10 different home offices. I would love to hear which you like best/least, and also leave a comment with a link to your home office, I would love to check it out!!

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8.

I would really like to apologize for all the following photos without links, they were found via Pinterest and did not include a link to a website.

9.                                                                                 10.

Office / Guest Room Desk

The first challenge I started with was the desk area. I had two desks there that where always messy and were very unorganized.

So I started by removing everything from the desktop. I used the same technique as when I was tidying my night stand. I put everything in a box.

All the stuff from the desk top. What a mess.

I then decided to remove one of the desks and move the laundry organizing in its place, with the printer on top. Currently we are using one of these and a big laundry basket (and the floor), but to get everything more organized I used the money from selling the desk to buying another.

Then I decided to just dive in the pile of stuff, some things where to go back into the desk, some moved to a different location and some thrown away. I decided to organize my drawers in this order:

1. Office supplies - the usual; pens, pencils, highlighters, tape, stabler, hole puncher, calculators, scissors as well as some things I like to keep handy, such as a lighter (for lighting candles), some matches and tissue.

2. Desk top - whenever I want to do crafts and such at the desk I will have to remove EVERYTHING located there.

3. Papers - I have quite a bit of paper that I haven't sorted yet, must to that. In the mean time They are in a drawer.

4. Electronics - well, everything with electronics. Label maker, Cd's, cables and such.

5. Printer Supplies - normal paper, pink thicker paper, photo paper and cartridges.

1.                                                             2. 

 3.                                                             4. 

5. 

I wanted my desk top to be organized with minimal stuff and clutter. I ended up - for now - keeping only my laptop, personal binder, water bottle, vase with pens and a tissue box.

Over my desk I have some sticky notes with my goals - meant to be fuzzy yes. The orange is "My Goal", the yellow is the numerical order on the goal. The blue is the actual goal. The green is more detailed, how to succeed, how I want things to be and such. I really absolutely do not like this.

I guess it could have been a good idea but it did not work out. However I do feel that staring at a blank white wall is a bit to boring. What do you have on the wall over your desk? Or do you place your desk differently?

This is actually the only thing I was able to complete. I was not disappointed however, I think it was a lot more work than I could imagine. It does look a lot better than when I started anyways.

To be continued...

Office / Guest Room Project Planner

So as I mentioned yesterday I have created a Project Planner. Basically its just to get organized, write down thoughts on a project and just other general stuff project related. I want to be able to create a binder where I have all my organizing projects in one place. This is so I can review my organizing better as well as finding out what worked and what did not work. I also have to be able to keep inspiration for a room there as well.

Sorry I don't know how to get the PDF on the blog post, so here are some pictures and a link to download a copy is below. Here is what I came up with:

You can download a blank copy here. If you do use this in a blog post or such, please link back to this post. Just keep in mind, this is a work in process. As this is my first project where I am using a planner I still do not know what I need in this planner, but at the moment I am very satisfied.

UPDATE: PDF. To download click on the Scribd button in the lower left corner.

Project Planner

Office / Guest Room Make-over

So my next big Organizing project is the office / guest room. It has been a dumping ground for me while I did my bedroom (as well as a dumping ground in general). So it is SUPER messy. This room is one of the hardest to keep clean and tidy. Every time it gets messy I just do not even bother going inside. And when we have guests (our parents), I tend to just try to hide all the junk. But not this time.

Before:

View from the door                           View from the opposite side

 Closet

 Close-ups

As you all see, there is way to much stuff in here. Every surface - and floor - is covered in stuff. Everyone knows that's NOT good. There is also just to much furniture here.

For the next few days I will share with you the process of my make-over. I will be having posts about my project organizer I created, the plan for this room. The process and then the final results. I did start this yesterday, and I have to be done before Friday evening, because my mum is coming to visit. However the blogging might take a bit longer.