a little office organization

In the month or so that we've lived in our new house, we've gotten pretty much everything put away/ unpacked and most of the rooms in our house are looking presentable- except the office. It's full of boxes of office supplies, books, files, and other such things. Nick keeps insisting that we tackle the office each weekend, but somehow the time goes to other projects. Well, last weekend was the weekend, my friends. We finally got rid of the crazy mess and made this room a bit more inhabitable. Here are the icky before shots: 

What really inspired this clean-up (besides necessity) was this red file cabinet. It used to belong to my parents but they didn't need it anymore and gave it to us. Although it's cute in red, you know that red's not my color and I have plans to spray paint it a different fun color. Someday. When I'm allowed to touch spray paint again!

We knew that we needed a file cabinet since we've outgrown our previous filing system over the last four years. I bought this file box when we were first married, but it doesn't quite hold all the important paperwork that we've accumulated over the years. 

So for the price of 1 drawer organizer and a box of hanging folders (less than $20) we organized our entire office. I went through our boxes of paperwork and all of our mail that had  been piling up and organized all the files in our life.

Then I went through all the extra office supplies that used to live in our rustic dresser in the old apartment. Since that piece has gone to live in Teeny Tiny's room, I used the top drawer of the  filing cabinet to house pens, scissors, stamps, etc.

 We had these white cardboard boxes from Ikea, that weren't really being put to good use. I emptied their contents and put in the items that we use the most (printer paper, thank you notes, extra CDs, and our checks).  We used to store a lot of extra non-office stuff in these boxes (such as wedding pictures and tools), but putting those things where they actually go pared down our office organization a lot.

 We hung up our Pottery Barn floating shelves (last seen here) above the file cabinet to house the white boxes and of course a little decoration. These shelves fit the space perfectly and actually look good with the red of the file cabinet.

The rest of the room got some organization too. We unpacked the boxes that were littering the floor or put them in storage if they contained things like books, since we don't currently have any bookshelves. 

 We cleared off the desk and kept only essential items up there. I still love that desk so much and I'm glad it fit in this space.

It still has a long way to go, but at least our office is clean and organized. On our future to-do list for this room is to build two long low bookshelves across the entire short wall (where the stereo is) to house all our books and the stereo. We would also like to add some artwork and maybe a giant message board on one wall as well. For now, we'll call this room functional- and call it a day!