She Organises and Declutters

Today I'd like to share a little decluttering project I embarked on recently. Decluttering gets my heart fluttering!

There is nothing I find more satisfying long term and short term than improving a space, whether it is chocablock full of junk, or simply in need of some re-purposing and organising. I dream of being a Professional Organiser, and am in the process of honing my skills, so that when B4 starts school, I can chase that dream job with some confidence up my sleeve!

I have been loving these two blogs recently, and these women have no idea how much they've inspired me lately! (though I hope they will now!)

From afar, Jen over at I Heart Organising has just blown my mind and inspired such a shift in my routines and got me improving my tiny little home in ways I didn't even realise it needed improving! Since reading her blog, I have started a family daily schedule and re-organised half a dozen spaces in my home, and I have plans to purchase some of the great customisable checklists and templates over at her Etsy Store very soon.

A little closer to home, Katrina over at The Organised Housewife got me container crazy in my home! My fridge, pantry and B4's room are all looking great thanks to her inspiring posts and pictures. She has some great new routines you can follow along with, and I'm certainly feeling on top of things since I've been following them.

After finding these two blogs, I started to really get going on my own personal projects, and here's what I did in my desk area!

*Blushes* This was the state of my desk area, also the first thing you see when you walk in the front door. Admittedly taken on a bad day, but there really isn't any excuse to have such a beautiful desk (handmade by my father) be in this state.

Not entirely awful, but certainly in need of adjusting. Little did I know just how much adjusting I would do this day....

A mess of power cords and paper work, with the odd box full of miscellaneous items.

Deep shelves in this desk meant that lots of things were getting pushed to the back, and shoved in at the front.

Even my little pinboards had seen prettier days...

Jump ahead a little while, and this is how it started to look. I had these cute shelves (thanks dad) waiting for a lick of paint, and as I was in no state to run to the shops for a complimentary colour, they were sprayed with the oh-so-available silver paint thrifted from Hub's stash.

I played around for a little while, kinda liking it, kinda not. I even slept on the whole idea...

Alas! By the next day the house looked like this, as I decided it really wasn't enough of a change, and hadn't really solved any problems. So out it all came! Poor Hubs came home to this.

EVERYTHING was pulled out of it's box and reorganised.

There was stuff EVERYWHERE. My fellow declutterers will understand, sometimes it has to get a whole lot worse, before it gets any better!

Hubs was not entirely convinced it was all worth it (he rarely is), and certainly was not impressed when later, the BSOD (Blue Screen of Death) took over his newly cleaned and reconnected computer. Oh dear. A lot of swearing later, it (and we) recovered and is now back in perfect working condition.

A lot of the stuff now laying all over the house had come from this cabinet...

...which used to look like so. Quite nice, great for holding many of my trinkets and treasures (and a favourite thrift of ours from the local noticeboard for $25). It was doing a fine job where it was, but I just couldn't help but wonder what it might look like.....

...over here instead! Turns out, it looked great! Some of the bonuses to the big change; We gained back some much needed floor space near the front doorway * Improved our posture whilst sitting at the computer, due to the perfect size computer nook * Discovered perfect homes for our Ikea stools (long loved $5 bargains that look so cute in a stack!) * Got the computer of the floor and away from the dust * And found new little homes for most of the things we had stored in the desk.

Splashes of red and turquoise started making themselves heard (I try to follow the direction that the space seems to hint at when it comes to colour accents), and after printing and laminating some new labels, things have been looking more organised than ever!

The screen saver is another opportunity to pick up on the colour scheme.

Labels make everything look better! And the added bonus-Hubs has a bit more of a clue when he's searching for something!

Ever evolving, this whole set up gets tweaked almost every time I look at it, as I'm not quite happy with where it's at. But I think that's half the fun! Stagnant space is wasted space in my home.

Those with a keen eye will see that even in the house tour, little things have moved around and found new homes since this project. The only thing that isn't totally fantastic about this change, is that my beautiful desk has had to find a new home in the garage. Rest assured, it is safe, and will be given lots of love when we have a bigger place to house it in.

In my next post, I'll be showing you what I had to do when I realised that the clever little black unit couldn't house EVERYTHING I needed it to, and I no longer had writing space.......

xo Cassie