Our Home Office

Growing up both my parents always had offices in our home. My mom was a teacher so hers was full of crafting supplies and for some reason I got it in my head that I would have an office in my house when I grew up too.

Tim pointed out that it wasn't necessary because neither of us work from home. Well... now, with everything going on, I do. 

Our office was outfitted with Ikea furniture and mostly just holds office supplies and everything else we aren't sure what to do with but I love that we have this space. We still need some serious organization systems in here and definitely need to do an overhaul at some point, but for now it's working.

The desk is from Ikea and I would love to get a new office chair since this one squeaks constantly. Right now I have quite a few work related items on this desk but usually it is just where I house my items for paying bills and my coupons.

The Alex 9 drawer from Ikea used to house all personal items like makeup and lotions. Now it houses those items in the top few drawers and then office supplies in the bottom. I plan to eventually make this full of all office supplies.

It certainly isn't a perfectly organized and beautiful space but it has come so far! I love collecting books and it makes me so happy to have all my favorites housed on the bookshelf along with some of our personal decor we have collected. 

I haven't found a solution for my scrapbooks so for now they are just stacked here. This small organizer has some office supplies and also holds all my hanging files. I try to not keep extra paper but we do have quite a bit that I think is important to save.

I love my Martha Stewart wall organizer where I house my "TO DO" and "TO FILE" papers. It's nice that Tim and I have a place to toss things and I can set aside time each week or so to file and do the items inside. I find that this saves me time in the long run instead of constantly filing!

All my jewelry (aka all my Wet Seal and Kohls jewelry) lives in this jewelry armoire along with my collection of free sunglasses and sewing supplies. What can I say? I'm not an expensive jewelry girl. I don't take good care of sunglasses so I will never spend more than $5 on them and I know I will break all of my jewelry so it's not worth it for me to spend money on it.

I love my tall bookcase from Ikea. It needs a little work but as some point I will put aside the time to get this done!

Another look back at my small bookcase. 

I love having some decor from our wedding in here! I hated the idea of buying things for the wedding and then getting rid of them so I made sure things like our card box and our decor (MR&MRS sign) were things I would include in my house. My brother made our card box and I found a decal on Etsy to attach and it turned out amazing. He is truly talented!

Do you have a home office? If not, where do you keep all your office supplies and paperwork??

Have a great day!

Quarantine Organizing: 5 Minute Organization Projects

Happy Monday friends!

I know this is a crazy world right now and you are probably spending more time at home than you normally do. I'm very blessed to be able to work from home in this craziness but it is certainly an adjustment being home day after day. 

If you are at home like me and are looking to get your house in order hang around because I'm sharing some five minute organization projects today! I know that starting a huge organization project can feel like an overwhelming task but sometimes if you just start with ONE drawer you can make a huge impact in just a few minutes.

First up: Office supplies. Specifically writing utensils.

I will be the first to admit that I have a hoarding problem when it comes to useful things. If something works and I can use it up I will hold onto it until I use it up. That's the case for pens, pencils, hilighters, markers, etc....

When we moved in I basically shoved everything into drawers in the office, made sure the drawers could shut and then moved on. I don't have a before picture of this drawer but one of the big Alex 9 drawers was full of writing utensils and it was insane. 

I took the time to organize all my writing utensils into categories. 

It's not beautiful, but it's organized by category and once I can get some matching bins in here I will be able to separate everything into containers and it will look much better!

I know I have a bit of a problem but like I said, I love to use things up. If I ever pull something from this drawer and it doesn't work I will toss it, I don't hoard old useless things. Since I am working at home currently this will help a lot because I can find what I'm looking for and potentially use up a couple of things while I'm home.

In the drawer that originally held everything, now I only have coloring supplies inside.

Markers, colored pencils and crayons fit in here nicely! From time to time Tim and I will do adult coloring books and it's nice to have these around.

Next up, in our guest room nightstand were two drawers filled with cords, electronics, and other things that we hadn't seen since we moved in last September. 

Honestly most of it we kept because it was electronics for Tim's video games, or we can always use an extra power cord but I managed to weed out a few things that were donated or listed on Poshmark to sell. 

Most of this stuff just simply didn't belong in this room. Anything electronic seemed like a better fit for the cabinet under our living room TV.  Organizing doesn't always mean getting rid of a ton of items, sometimes it can mean just moving things to a more appropriate place. You need to set up areas that work for you and keep all like items together. If we had been looking for a power cord I would've looked in the TV cabinet, not the guest room so now everything is nice and together!

The drawers in the nightstand are looking good!

The top drawer holds some extra coasters (and since this picture was taken the blue ones were moved to a side table in our living room), the remotes for the tv and dvd player in this room, and all of our Norwegian freebies! I'm not quite sure what to do with all these freebies from our honeymoon cruise but I can't bring myself to get rid of anything just yet.

The bottom drawer is completely empty! I created space in this room which is exactly what I wanted to do when I started this project. 

Like I said before, just find a drawer or a small area that you can sort through in five minutes and you will feel so much better! It truly makes a difference in your home environment and makes you feel less stressed. 

I'm hoping to get some other projects done while I'm home but I am still working during the day M-F. However I'm able to keep up with things like laundry and cleaning much easier now that I don't have a commute and can use my lunch hour to clean up a bit. I'm not going to lie, I'm totally digging this work from home life and wish I was able to do it every day!

I hope that you are healthy and know that I'm thinking about everyone as we navigate through this crazy time. I hope that you can visit my little corner of the internet for a quick escape and know that I'm definitely nervous in this scary time as well but I'm going to try to keep things as normal as possible around here (posting on Mondays and Wednesdays) with a little bit of everything :)

Have a great day!

Straightening Up The Office

Happy MLK Jr Day! Are you off work today? I am and am greatly enjoying my long weekend. I honestly spent most of Saturday laying on the couch resting up from the week but yesterday I did manage to get a ton of laundry and cleaning done which made me feel super productive.

Sometimes I get super hard on myself because this house is moving along slower than I thought it would. I came in thinking we would do all the projects in one weekend and we would instantly be amazing at renovating. News flash: we have NO idea what we are doing. Neither of us has a clue and we've been learning a LOT throughout the process. I will go into more detail in another post but we had a huge fail yesterday! It involved yelling and tears and feeling like failures because we purchased parts that were too big. 

So for now I'll stick with what I'm good at, organizing and cleaning! Let's get started in our office closet which had turned into my Monica closet.

This closet was full of gift wrap, my wedding dress, childhood items, bags, games, and other random items.

It was truly a mess and I pulled everything out, sorted through it all and when I placed everything back inside....

Still pretty full but it looks SO much better! I am so impressed that I managed to put almost everything back in, but more organized. There were a few things that went to the basement but it was all childhood toys that I want to save. There were also bins of toys and other gifts I've picked up on sale and those were able to go downstairs in my stockpile.

I still have room to grow on the top shelf if I need to store more items.

The fact that you can see the floor in there is huge since before you couldn't!

Now, let me show you what the office looked like after Christmas when all of our Christmas gifts were piled up inside.

Insane right? So much stuff and it just looks like a total disaster.

But now....

I just have pictures that we haven't hung up yet, a few things left to put away and our new coffee table we need to put together but are waiting for Wayfair to send some parts they left out of the original package. It's not perfect but looks SO much better!

This is the other side of the room. It's definitely not complete but I will keep you updated as we continue to update this area!

I am really happy that this room is *almost* complete and at least looks presentable if people come over to visit. That's the number one thing I'm going for in our home. I want everything to look presentable even if it's not 100% perfect and there is still a ton of updates we want to do.

Have a great day everyone!

One Year Later

Can you believe we've been living in our apartment for an entire year?

Last year I shared Our Moving Story and then shared some pictures of our apartment in different posts. You can see all of the posts revolving around our apartment here where I've shared decorating and organization that we've done over the past year. However, today I thought I would share updated pictures of our apartment.

I spent a ton of time cleaning one day recently (cleaning routine post AND speed cleaning video are coming soon!) and decided to take pictures while everything was looking super sparkly.

I clean starting in the back of the apartment and work my way towards the front so the first room you get to view is our bedroom.

Our bedroom hasn't really changed in the last year. We still have the same comforter but did get some new softer sheets from Kohls which have been amazing. We are still loving our Ikea furniture which has held up very well.

I am still working on getting all our hangers switched over to huggable hangers, my side is almost complete and then I just have to get through Tims!

Not too many changes in here at all but we love our bedroom. It's peaceful, relaxing and I don't want to spend the night anywhere else!

Our second bedroom has a nice bed for when we have guests, but also holds our dirty laundry and quite a bit of storage. I didn't do much with the decor at all just hung up a few things and threw some random decor items on the nightstand. Also the paint on the dresser and nightstand are peeling but that's something we will just have to deal with until we move out since I don't want paint fumes inside our apartment!

I love the curtains in here even though Tim thinks they are boring. I prefer nice neutral items with random pops of color if I choose. No need for crazy color everywhere because that's not relaxing to me.

This room is definitely not as put together as I'd like. We have piles of paper goods stockpiled in here, a bin of paper memorabilia, tons of childhood trophies, a spare tv, and you don't even get to hear about what's in the closet!

I swear I don't like to hoard items and really only keep items that are important to us, but this room needs some serious work and decluttering in the next year.

I love Tim's Gronk picture and I'm so glad I've inherited it by moving in with him :)

Just some random decor on the nightstand...and onto the next room!

Our bathroom is super small and simple. It could definitely use some more organization because we've been just adding products to it throughout the past year.

Nothing really new in the bathroom! (It's not the most exciting room in any house I don't think)

We have our "middle room" which we use as an office and to store some kitchen supplies.

My desk area is really unorganized right now. I kind of unloaded everything into the desk when we moved in and honestly haven't touched most of it since. I really should I go through all my desk supplies and donate what I'm not using. There are probably a ton of things I could toss at this point as well.

On the right hand side of my desk is my Alex 9 Drawer Unit from Ikea where I keep all my makeup and most of my beauty products. There is still plenty of decluttering that could happen in there.

On the left hand side of my desk is my jewelry armoire which could also be decluttered quite a bit. I know I have plenty of things in there that I don't need or want anymore. My list of areas to declutter keeps getting longer and longer!

I have my Target cabinet filled with extra kitchen supplies we don't have room for in our kitchen as well as our recycling area.  We go to our local transfer center every Saturday to drop off our weekly recycling since our apartment only has a dumpster and no recycling program.

I love my Martha Stewart file organizer. I like having a TO DO section where I can put items that I need to take action on and a TO FILE section for papers that need to be filed into my file drawer.

The next room is our kitchen....

We have a small galley kitchen and often dream of having a bigger kitchen in the future. We still have all the same appliances as last year but have upgraded our rug to one from Kohls and picked up a new nicer trash can at Target.

It may not be the prettiest, biggest, or nicest kitchen but it works for now!

I think my favorite room and the one we certainly spend the most time in is our living room.

We have updated from a candy bowl on our table to a simple teal tray with a candle and a few decor items.

Our gallery wall has been added to since we first moved in and is my favorite project.

That's it! Our cute little apartment :)

We are loving it here but are also dreaming of owning our own home and have started looking at houses and property. We plan on hopefully purchasing so we can move out next May/June but we will see what happens!

Thanks for coming on the tour!