Office Organization & Makeover

When we moved into this house in April of 2011, we moved stuff from two locations, a storage unit that held most of our belongings that had been in our house in Castor, and our everday items and some furniture that we were using while temporarily living in my Grandma's house and waiting for our Castor house to sell.

 

At my Grandma's I had just been throwing all our paperwork into a box, with the intention of sorting and filing it once we were settled.  During that time we accumulated loads of paperwork from selling and buying our houses, as well as the normal paper detritus of day-to-day living, such as insurance renewals, bills and receipts.  After moving our files from Castor, I ended up with 5 boxes of paper.  My desk only has one file drawer and I wanted a small sturdy 2-drawer cabinet for the rest.  Unfortunately, sturdy filing cabinets cost significantly more than I was willing to pay.  Thankfully, one day as I was perusing the furniture at The Post, I came upon the exact filing cabinet I needed for only $10!  It was pretty scratched up, but I have a handy husband who sanded and repainted it for me.

 

All that I needed to do after that was force myself to sit down and go through all that paper.

 

It took me a week, and I looked through every single piece of paper in those boxes and files, which stretched all the way back to my first bank account when I was 16.  I sorted and filed and ended up with a garbage bag of paper that I took out to the farm to burn.  The rest was filed by date and put into my refurbished filing cabinet.

 

Since then Mike has painted the room, painted and installed new baseboards, hung drapery rods and helped me hang some pictures.  What an improvement.

 

BEFORE 

 

On the left is the newly painted filing cabinet.

 

I should also point out that Mike had previously refinished my desk top
after my mother purchased the vintage desk for me as a gift.
And yes, that is a fax machine on the right, it comes in handy at tax time.

 

AFTER