Before and After Pics of My Decluttered Home Office :)

13 years ago

Due to a number of ridiculous circumstances that are no real excuse whatsoever, it had been three years since I had filed any papers in my home office, so crap just kept accumulating and the final straw was that we had our carpets cleaned (every other room in the house) just before Thanksgiving, so all random around the house paperwork was dumped into the office all at one time... :(

I started on Jan. 6 in the home office and it took me fifteen hours total over a little more than a week's time to beat it back into submission.

However, I have been victorious!!!

I've posted before and after pictures on my blog (link below). I'm really proud of the final results. It was a lot of hard focused work and it looks SO much better!

http://herbygoodness.blogspot.com/2011/01/what-way-to-start-year-before-and-after.html

Here is a link that might be useful: Before and After Pics of My Decluttered Home Office

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Comments (9)

lov2garden
13 years ago
AWESOME! Can I have it? Your office looks so peaceful yet ready to get something done!

Fantastic job! Well done!
msmarieh
Original Author
13 years ago
Thank you!

Yes, it does feel soooo much more peaceful in there. I've gone in a few times since then and just sat and smiled as I looked around. :) LOL Can you tell I am easily entertained?

I'm working on the basement now. Fortunately it wasn't really horrific, but it was the typical basement storage dumping ground. I took before pictures and I think it will be quite inspiring when it is done. At the rate I am going, it may end up taking less time than my office took. Paper just takes so dang long to go through! Fortunately the basement is mostly boxes and many of them are "whole" boxes (like boxes of canning jars for instance) that don't need to be gone through individually.

My christmas and craft stuff will take longer to go through, but I am persevering and making great progress!

When I am done, I'll post before and after pictures. The basement isn't finished, so neither set of pics will be particularly pretty, but I'm going for organized here.

I'm actually ahead of schedule, since this was the project I had designated for February.
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trilobite
13 years ago
Yay! Good for you! Looking at the pictures was good inspiration for my February project (decluttering our snail mail).
claire_de_luna
13 years ago
I'm so impressed with you! Thanks for sharing your progress; it's posts just like this that are so inspiring and what the Organizing Forum used to be about. Since I'm slogging through an office clean-up of my own, it will nice to have your recent progress to reference while I do it.
sherwoodva
13 years ago
Thanks for the inspiration! I am in the same boat, except our stacks of paper are in the attic. When we had the basement finished three years ago, we moved the filing cabinets to the attic. Thought we would just file bank statements etc with no problem. Instead, the papers just went on the stairs. So now we have a copy paper box full of papers to be filed, plus a new stack on the stairs.

I am going to ask DH to bring that box down so we can start sorting it out. Need to do it before tax time anyway.
mvastian
13 years ago
colorcrazy, why don't you move your filing to a more convenient place, so it won't get out of hand again?

Maria
sudiepav
12 years ago
Your "before" picture is my office, too! What has worked for me in the past is to set a timer for 30 minutes, work for that time, and then quit. I made astonishing progress in just a few sessions the last time I tried this. Why did I let this get do bad again? Like you, we did some remodeling, and what we couldn't find a place for went in the office. As it got messier, I just kept stacking. You're inspiring me to start again!
barbcollins
12 years ago
The best thing I did to cut back on my paper clutter was to go "paperless" with a Neat Receipts scanner.

Now I just run everything thru the scanner and throw it in a folder marked for the month. The files will be waiting for me on my laptop so sort and categorize when I have time. (Hmmm. there are some there waiting for me now, maybe I should get off GW :)
melaska
12 years ago
Great job! I just shared your post on my Facebook.

I was reading this blog the other day on 'Taking Action on Everyday Papers' - linked below. Sounds like a good 'interim' solution before the actual final action.

Here is a link that might be useful: Taking Action on Everyday Papers