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Category Archives: home office organization
My Home Office Pin Board
Though I have a lovely gallery wall in my office, what I face when I’m sitting at my desk are two doors – one which leads to the hallway and I almost always keep open, and the other which leads to our laundry room and I always keep closed since there’s another door we use to access that space.
For awhile I kept both doors blank, which made for an uninspiring view from my desk. I finally realized the door I always keep closed would be a great spot for a cork board. While I love Pinterest and use it almost daily, it’s nice to be able to pin on an traditional physical board. It’s a great spot not just for inspiring images, but also for notes, reminders, keepsakes, artwork, and fabric swatches. Plus a cork board gives me a certain tactile experience I don’t get when I’m pinning virtually, and by having it in front of my desk it can serve as something beautiful to glance at throughout the workday to give my eyes a rest from the computer screen.
Before heading to the store, I measured my door so I could easily decide what size cork board would make best use of the space. The 24×36 size was just the right width and height. Not too big, not too small.
To make it fit seamlessly with the decor of my office, I covered the board in a simple white cotton fabric and gave it the look of nailhead trim by adding super inexpensive thumb tacks along the line of the board’s frame. Since my place is a rental, I didn’t want to make any holes on the door, so I used command strips to mount the board.
Overall the process was easy and I’m thrilled with the results. Here’s how it looks:
I pinned: a few inspiring images (from my virtual boards) that I had printed on card stock, a magazine pull-out, a lovely art piece my sister made for me with the word ‘Love’ painted in gold, a few fabrics I’m considering for pillows for the shop, as well as a little printed reminder to myself to drink more water, take my vitamins, and make green juice.
For those of you interested in making a similar board for yourself, here’s a list of what I used and a few tips:
- 24×36 cork board
- 1 yard of white cotton fabric
- 2 packs of thumb tacks
- clear pushpins
- a pack of large command strips
- light duty staple gun
Tips:
-Iron your fabric before stapling it to the board
-After you staple the fabric on one side of the board, pull the fabric really tight before stapling the other side.
-When placing the thumb tacks, use your thumb as a spacing guide
-Place the command strips on the frame of the board to help them best adhere to the wall
-The strips come in two different colors - black and white. Since you may possibly be able to see a little bit of the strips from a side view, get the ones that are closest in color to either your wall color or the color of your fabric.
-Most importantly, have fun pinning to your board!
*The folks at Office Depot sponsored this post. All ideas/opinions/thoughts are my own.
Posted in home office organization, organization
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A Beautifully Organized Creative Workspace
In love with this creative workspace from the home of Darcy Miller, illustrator and editorial director of Martha Stewart Weddings. It’s the chicest craft room I ever did see! It’s not only fully stocked with all the supplies you could ever need for any creative project, but it’s also beautifully organized. Everything has a home designated based on frequency of use, so things are accessible and easy to find. With the exception of the art supplies which bring a cheerful rainbow array of color to the space, most everything (the walls, floor, ceiling, furniture, and storage containers) is black, white, and gray. This creates a uniform look and keeps the room from feeling chaotic or overwhelming.
See more here.
Photography by Christopher Sturman
Washi Tape Calendar
Do like Jensie Jean of Take Two They’re Small and use washi tape in different colors and patterns to beautifully mark multi-day events and projects in your planner. A nice alternative to using highlighters, doing this lets you see at a glance what you have coming up and when you’ll be busiest. Great idea, wouldn’t you agree?
BTW, Russell + Hazel binders, like the ones you see above, are currently on sale on One Kings Lane through Saturday! They’re beautiful and can be customized with their SmartDate system.
image credits: 1-russell + hazel, 2-pretty tape, 3- take 2 they’re small
Beautifully Organized Magazines Part II
In the last ‘Beautifully Organized’ post I talked about organizing the latest magazine issues – the ones that are current reading material. Today I want to go over a few tips on organizing old magazine issues that you’ve held onto for future reference. You may have heard the organizing rule that you should only keep the most current issue of any given magazine and toss the rest. While that may be a good idea for many, I don’t believe it’s necessarily a rule all should follow. If you’re anything like me, you love your shelter and fashion glossies and like to go through old issues from time to time for a jolt of visual inspiration for a blog post, design project, etc. Oftentimes an issue from a few years ago is just as inspiring as a current one and the tactile experience of flipping through the pages is a nice break from all the digital.
Since new issues arrive to us every month from various subscriptions though, the challenge is not letting the collection get out of control. Most of don’t have space to store every single issue of every single publication. What I like to do is, when I get a new magazine in, as I’m reading through it, I fold down the corner of pages that have inspiring content. If I only dog-ear two or three pages, I rip those out, save them in a magazine clippings binder (more on that later!) and recycle the remainder of the magazine. If I find that I’ve dog-eared tons of pages though, I keep the magazine.
Here’s a few ideas on how to store the keepers:
Separate them out by type…
Place stacks of them on open shelving in the living room, bedroom, or office. If done neatly, they can be integrated nicely into the decor of a space.
Alternatively, containerize them in magazine files a la Carrie Bradshaw…
Ikea and the Container Store are my go-to places to get magazine files. You can either turn them around so the fully covered side is facing towards the front, and label them for a clean, streamlined look…
Or you can turn them the opposite way so that the upper half of the magazines show…
It’s a good idea to turn the files this side when you don’t have labels on them. Bonus: Looks particularly nice when the spines are colorful!
Tell me, do you collect magazines? How do you organize and store them?
Hope this inspired some ideas for your own home!
image credits: 1- 7th house on the left 2- mimi + meg, 3- photography by danielle moss styling by alexandra berlin design, 4- scan from your home is a sanctuary via this is glamorous, 5- martha stewart, 6- canadian house and home, 7- hbo’s sex and the city, 8- via lonny mag, 9- via for the love of pretty, 10- deliciously organized, 11- i heart organizing, 12- arianna belle, 13- found via this pin
Beautifully Organized: Magazines
A good tip for magazines that are current reading material is to store them wherever you tend to do most of your reading. Here, a basket next to the sofa makes them easily accessible, perfect for reading while lounging:
You could follow the same idea and place a basket or rack next to or under your nightstand if you read in bed.
Or near your desk if you tend to do your reading there:
Maybe you have a desk that has built-in storage, like the one shown above right (lucky!). Since chances are you don’t, you could consider creating your own storage using display shelves. A magazine wall like this one shown below would be perfect for an office or breakfast nook:
In a later post I’ll go over ideas for storing larger collections of back issues saved for future reference, so stay tuned for that!
image credits: 1 -via plantation design, 2- anthology, 3 -cupcakes and cashmere, 4 -found via pinterest, 5-lonny, 6- made by girl
Beautifully Organized: Lists
I’m one who loves lists (and have a feeling many of you do as well!) so today I want to share with you my round-up of 10 stylish list pads. Whether it’s a to-do list, shopping list, or simply a list of things to remember, it’s nice to organize and mind dump everything onto paper, especially onto pretty paper like this:
1-the long list, 2- to-do adhesive notes, 3- ‘get it done’ notepad, 4- orange zig zag photo pad, 5- striped notepad, 6- oxford pad, 7- peacock pad, 8- happy notes, 9- recycled paper market list , 10-market shopping pad
Tell me, do you love lists? Do you have a favorite list pad for jotting them all down?
Organizing Clips
Fun little clips for stylishly sorting through paperwork and clearly identifying the priority and importance of each file or document:
1- action organizing clips, 2- number organizing clips
Martha Stewart for Staples
As soon as I heard about this from my friend Maggie, I got so excited (yes I’m an organizing geek!). I went this weekend to Staples to check it out in person and I loved what I saw – beautiful boxes, binders, notebooks, desktop accessories, dividers, labels, files:
1- stackable organizers, 2-box, 3-binders, 4- journal, 5-dividers, 6-accordion file, 7- binder accessories, 8- sheet protectors, 9- journal, 10- red bands, 11-kraft labels, 12-file folder labels, 13-color coding labels, 14-kitchen labels, 15- dry erase decal, 16- pocket
Toast Rack as Mail Organizer
Love the idea of using a vintage toast rack as a way to beautifully organize mail or neatly hold stationary:
Look for vintage racks on Etsy, eBay and your local flea market.
image credits: 1- via this is glamorous, 2- via design sponge, 3-photography by Patrick Cline via lonny mag
Secretary Desks
Secretary desks are so great for adding some function to a little corner. They provide plenty of concealed storage and the hinged desktop surface can be folded up when not in use.
image credits: 1- domino, 2- domino, 3- eddie ross, 4- via habitually chic,, 5- via french by design, 6- lonny mag, 7-via gunkelman flesher, 8- hickory chair, 9-domino, 10- domino
Posted in home office organization, home offices, small spaces
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