My other worry for her is that the boxes she puts the frequently used desk supplies in are going to become annoying to use--too many movements to get stuff in and out.
If she'd asked me, I'd have suggested drawers instead. There are some attractive ones! They aren't necessarily that cheap, but they're very functional.

Wooden, w/ a "wooden crate" feel

https://www.etsy.com/listing/113477287/reserved-for-alana-multi-drawer-desk

"fine furniture" feel, in wood

http://www.hayneedle.com/product/stackstylewooddeskorganizerssetthreemahogany.cfm

http://www.hayneedle.com/product/stackstylewooddeskorganizersmediastoragedrawermahogany.cfm

https://www.houzz.com/products/original-home-office-2-drawer-organizer-prvw-vr~1915228

http://global.rakuten.com/en/store/atom-style/item/0000b03833/

decoupaged or painted

https://www.etsy.com/listing/226155696/mini-chest-of-drawers-jewelry-box?ref=related-6

unfinished

http://www.hobbylobby.com/Crafts-%26-Hobbies/Wood-Crafting/Unfinished-Wood/Wood-Chest-with-4-Drawers/p/28557

paper drawers with bright prints covering them

http://www.containerstore.com/s/bigso-prism-stockholm-paper-drawers/d?productId=11001086&q=paper%20drawers

more-refined-looking plastic

http://www.containerstore.com/s/smoke-like-it-portrait-paper-drawer/d?productId=10036932&q=paper%20drawers

http://www.containerstore.com/s/office/desktop-collections/smoke-like-it-collection/smoke-like-it-accessory-drawer/123d?productId=10036937&green=377DC859-65DD-50F5-B45C-44970BA122CA

(including one w/ different sizes of drawers: http://www.containerstore.com/s/like-it-smoke-modular-drawers/d?productId=10034766&q=drawers )

Leather-like covering

http://www.aliexpress.com/store/product/2-drawer-double-layer-leather-office-filing-cabinet-desk-file-organizer-holder-storage-box-A286/102229_567394759.html

retro metal

http://www.containerstore.com/s/pink-bisley-5-drawer-cabinet/d?productId=11000880&q=drawers

I agree with you that it's a great makeover, but maybe just a first step. I'm not a fan of organizing things that still results in visual clutter and that's what she still has to deal with. All of those knick-knacks interfer with functionality. Also, I think Elfa belongs in a closet. Those top wire drawers are fairly inaccessible unless she is very tall. Sample books should be arranged like books, not in stacks. But until she can get more storage, this is probably the best that she can do. I agree with you on the cords, they need to shortened or removed. And it is good that she is utilizing bare wall space and moving things off of the floor. Whitney certainly has a sweet sense of style and color. Love her color choices and the accessories are charming. I wish her the best in her career!

The first thing I thought was why-the-heck didn't she remove the white-beige carpet!!!! It's going to be ruined with the high traffic it's going to get in a relatively small space, including rolling office chairs over it at the desk without a plastic pad over the carpet. If the budget was small, I would have painted the subfloor and maybe softened it with rug/s or cushioned pads where necessary for standing for long periods of time, or put a floating floor, peel and stick or diy vinyl planks on the floor.

But I'll give credit where credit is due. That's a lot of creative thinking without the benefit of custom cabinetry. Great job!

I disagree with the "Elfa belongs in a closet" statement. I'm not a fan of those sorts of "should's." The aesthetics of this don't bother me at all--this is a room that is overwhelmingly used as an office; the dining-room function is secondary.

And she looked on the tall side--there wasn't much in her photo to judge scale, but she just seemed it. I think she'll be OK w/ that drawer. And she can adjust it down if it really gets to be annoying.

I'm actually more worried about having to lift the sewing machine up that high--sewing machines are heavy, and the stuff you have to lift (and take down) over your head is easier to control when it's lighter.

I'm also not sure that you *can* arrange sample books like books, standing up. They wouldn't be that stable, I don't think. And this way, she can see the labels on them. If you stood them on their edges w/ the spine facing out, I think they'd be floppier.

But she at least has moved at least some of them into a corner where they won't be so visible from everywhere else.

(Here's her floor planL http://whitneyjdecor.com/2015/08/the-best-small-space-solution-for-a-home-officedining-room/ )

Wow, she has a lot of elements to organize in that space. I think she did a good job, but one of my first thoughts was about those cords too! They do look very organized, but the cords hanging reminds me of wires on computer equipment (another pet peeve).

I also don't love spaces with a lot of visual clutter, but what she has there is a work space, it's not suppose to be calming and clutter free. It has to have all the elements required for her to do her work in an efficient way. She has that added challenge of the work area being small.

Occasionally someone will pass a quilting magazine on to me. Those often contain images of quilting rooms, and man those blow me away. I can't imagine having the space and money to put together a quilting studio like those in magazines. It's unrealistic for most of us. Looking at it from that standpoint, I give this lady huge thumbs up for working with small space, and limited budget.

Talley, you're right about those sample books, the "pages" are very floppy so stacking is probably the only storage option there. Wouldn't it be fun to flip through those books?

Seriously, Quasi, quilting rooms, Lego workshops, fabulous garages for whatever hobby the guy is into, greenhouses, barn studios, home gyms.... Some homes even have rooms to wrap presents in. I just can't imagine.

I hope that "Organized Living," the company that made her custom system gave her a break on the price in return for blogging on how their product created such a cool workspace. It's very versatile. She is in a very exciting time of life, I hope she is very successful.

Fabric sample books have floppy fabric pages. You need to store them flat if possible. I'd have more shelves and thinner stacks to make retrieving them easier, but her shelves are very usable.

As for the dangling cord handles, if you don't have them, you break a lot of fingernails pulling the bottom book out of the stack..

This looks like a well arranged WORK room. Aesthetics are secondary to work flow and convenience.

The sewing machine placement for someone who makes her living sewing seems ( seams, LOL) a little high. Every time you need it, it's at least head level if not more. That could lead to hurting one's back or neck or dropping the machine. I would look at a more practical placement with a nod to ergonomics. Once you injure your back or neck it never feels quite the same.

I get it, she is using the room for multipurpose and in a perfect world, she would have an actual work room with a real work table and sewing area. This will work fine until she makes it big, hires out her work while she writes a book and has a decorating show on HGTV and becomes a decorator for the Stars.

I think I would separate the fabric swatch books, (those loopy things ) into color families and store them in boxes or some sort of bin. The loops throw things off. Everything else looks pretty organized until the eye catches the loops. At least they are similar in color. But hey, it's her room and she has done a great job of getting it in order. As any sewist can attest to, it's a hobby that is hard to keep organized. She's trying and that's a very good thing. She will inspire many people. Yay!

As for the dangling cord handles, if you don't have them, you break a lot of fingernails pulling the bottom book out of the stack..

yeah, that's why I was thinking that if you doubled them over on themselves to take up the slack and secured w/ cable ties, you would still have enough of a handle to grab. But it would pull that thick black line up that falls down and overlaps all the other ones (creating multiple uncontrolled black lines overlapping, etc.) to be a slightly saggy single one within the space of the book itself. So still sort of busy, but more contained.

I'm so captivated by the whole issue that I want to go find a bunch of fabric-sample books and try it out to see how it looks, and if it works.

i wouldn't move the fabric-sample books to boxes--I think that would make it really hard to use them (even more so since you need to store those things flat). This is, as we've all pointed out, a WORK room, and efficiency is really important.

Looks pretty in the photos, but not so practical in real life. The shelves are too open and the items are prone to sliding off the edges. We have a similar shelving system in our office. It was not our installation but came with the office. Can't tell you how many times binders and boxes fell off the upper shelves when I tried to reach for something!

In my experience, if you want affordable storage with drawers, 9-drawer dressers or tallboy dressers work best. CL has tons of them in any size, style and price. For my home office/sewing room I've got a ginormous 70's 9-drawer wood dresser from CL for $60. It does a marvelous job storing my office supplies and sewing notions. My printer sits on it. It's easy to make dividers from wooden planks and put them in the drawers. If an old beaten-up dresser looks too offensive to the eye, in most cases you can paint it.

In my kid's room I stacked two dressers. Both were from the same set - 80's oak, one 9-drawer and the other 2-drawer. They both had a simple rectangular shape without legs, which made them easy to stack. The small dresser sat on top of the big one. Tons of room for my son's Legos, Bionicles, toy cars, and what not. So easy to organize. My kid quickly mastered it and never mixed his Legos with his toy cars!

It's an organizational trade-off between seeing things out in the open and storing things. Everyone has to do what's best for them, finding out what works is a process and a matter of forming good habits. And of course, anything is better than piles of stuff. The longer I live, the more I want things in drawers or behind doors. But my children don't seem to mind if everything is stored on the floor or on their unmade beds ; ) .

Lana, I found a tall chest-on-chest- I think it has seven deep drawers-at a thrift shop. It's hard-rock maple from the 1950s. Sort of colonial looking but with classic lines. It is probably the toughest piece of furniture in the house and holds a ton of stuff in those drawers. I paid $275 for it, so it was pricey, but I couldn't pass it up. Solid wood. Wooden dividers in the drawers. The finish is in near perfect condition. It was a fabulous find.

In defense of those Sterilite drawers, I will say:

They are very affordable, and they are very, very flexible.

I find that dressers are never available in the size that fits under the window, or in a skinny stack between the door and the bed.

Our Sterilite drawers that we used for toy storage have made it all the way through college without breaking. So...

Another thumbs up for sterlite drawer units from our house. We have only used the smaller styles, but they are wonderful. Take them apart, clean them in the dishwasher. If they break, no tears. I'm thinking of getting a couple of the shoebox sized drawers to put under the bathroom sink. We started with rubbermaid shoeboxes (very tight lids) when DD was a toddler, and loved the organization of plastic boxes under there. It seems like drawer units would be preferable to having to pull out one of the entire boxes, like we do now. Anyhow, those drawer boxes may not be the most stylish thing, but they do work and stand up to dirty environments like under a sink, or in a craft room.

I liked the Sterilite drawers for the kids's toys, quasifish. Here are the reasons:

Toys were protected from NYC grimy dust, so better than open shelves.

Kids could pull the entire drawer out and voilá! it's a box. They'd carry the Legos to where they were playing and set the box down--but there was no lid to keep track of or to trip over.

When they were done, they could scoop stuff back into the "box" and put it back into its "lld" (the frame).

Also, the boxes utilize a huge percentage of the cubic space that the "furniture" takes up. For a wooden dresser, you lose a lot to the drawers, to that stupid 3 to 5 inch gap between the back of the drawer and the dresser frame.

That was how we started using the drawer boxes, was for a young child. We started with crayons, pens, paints, etc. and then moved on to using them for other things because we liked how they worked. Another aspect of them for us is that DD will eventually outgrow a lot of these things and the boxes are easy to re-purpose in other locations and for storing other types of items. If in the end we find we have accumulated more than we need, it's also easy to let them go. In some respects, the eventual disposable-ness of them also makes them appealing.