The nesting plan: The office

I’m excited to be moving on to a room that involves organization and cleaning, yes, but also a bit more creative activity as well. The office. It’s amazing to me that we even have one in our place and we’re enjoying it as long as we can before it possibly has to be shared with the new baby. Though I promise not to send J and his desk back into the storage room in this apartment.

When we first moved in this room was used to hold boxes, disassembled furniture and other items we didn’t know what to do with, so when it came time to make it more functional as an office we still ended up letting a lot of stuff stick around. Through this project I really want to get those items to their real homes and/or make the decision to get rid of them (which is probably what we should have done before we moved).

So what’s in the room right now?

• Two Ikea Billy bookshelves in birch
• Two Ikea desks (one in black and one in white with birch drawers)
• A silver grey file cabinet
• A printer
• A sewing machine
• A big concrete pillar (so ya that has to stay)
• A collection of items including a baby bouncy seat, wall art, bulletin boards, air mattress, birthday party supplies, J’s chin-up bar that goes in the doorway (but the rest of the time leans against the wall by my desk), etc.

What have we done up to this point?

• Purchased that second bookshelf and put a glass shelf at the top of each with in-shelf lighting for displaying things. Those things are currently a box of baby wipes, a flashlight and the pump for the air mattress
• Purchased my desk, the white version of J’s black desk with the intention of creating a visibly His/Hers workspace. I held out for seriously two years hoping for my dream mid-century desk in my price range but ended up accepting defeat and going a different direction.
• Purchased two bulletin boards and commissioned a friend to create a painting to create a usable and mentally stimulating area over J’s desk
• Moved a couple boxes/bins to the storage room after I fixed up that area

And what’s left to do to make this room functional as an office, but also easy to keep organized and flex to fit overnight guests, occasionally a napping baby and still look good doing it?

The List

• Purge and organize books in some logical way
• Get everything that should be stored up off the floor and into a closet or storage room
• Sit down with a plan and roughly map out the look/colour scheme of this room so it has a shot at being cohesive in the end
• Fill display shelves
• Wash windows and window sill
• Fix or throw away tower fan
• Hang John’s art and bulletin boards
• Decide what’s going over my desk, purchase and hang
• Possibly move filing cabinet into closet (figure out where the printer would go then…)
• Clean out desk drawers, put in an organization system
• Clean off and wipe down desk tops
• Clean computers, monitors, keyboards, etc.
• Clean out closet, decide what’s going in there and put it back together
• Label everything
• Get more bins for upper closet storage
• Possibly get baskets or closed storage to go on the top of the bookshelves for rarely used office items

It’s actually a lot to do, and some decisions like what I want hanging over my desk may take a lot for me to pull the trigger. I mean, two years of searching and I end up with a desk from Ikea so my track record ain’t great. But we’ll do what we can and hopefully in the end this can be a room where we can work, store things in a way that makes them easy to access/put away again and that can be enjoyed by guests and baby alike.

A tall order. Next time I post I’ll give an update of the work but I’ll also spend a bit more of the time exploring the look of the room based on what we have to work with (and our budget which = try not to spend anything) and coming up with a bit of a style board of sorts. But a realistic one full of only products I can obtain and changes I can execute. Should be fun.