The Cheapest Office Redo in the World

Yes, that title is true. I rearranged and completely reorganized our guest room/office for $3.69. That's the price of the small potted plant that I bought from Food Lion to sit on my desk (I know, that's not that thrifty, but it's super cute and it was calling my name). Everything I used to organize this room was something we already owned, and I'm so excited with how much the room has changed with such simple updates and shifting!

First, some before shots. The day I started attacking this room, this was literally what it looked like:

A. Mess. 

It hadn't always looked this bad - I've gradually gotten lazier and lazier with putting things "away" - but to be honest it's never been very organized. We only moved in in April and this room just hasn't been a huge priority. Even though it's a mess, it's all localized to one side of the room so guests could sleep in the bed and still have plenty of room. But I dreaded doing much of anything in here...the desks are narrow and any amount of clutter on them makes me feel claustrophobic, even to write a thank you note to someone. I certainly wasn't doing any craft projects or doing any work on the computer in here. Something definitely needed to be done. 

Those pink and purple bins in the pictures used to be in my closet, holding things like socks, underwear, and shoes. I've had them for years, and even though they've been great storage devices I decided to get rid of them while I was reorganizing my closet a few weeks ago. That's what really got the mental ball rolling on this office redo...I could use those bins for something. What, I wasn't sure, but they could have purpose again. And even though the colors are a little brighter than my current taste, they're free, and you just can't argue with that ever. Then I remembered those little white bins, which I got off a clearance rack for $2 each several months ago. I'd tried them out for a couple different purposes/places but they just didn't feel like they'd found their home yet. I knew they could be used in the office for something too. And that, friends, is when I got really excited about figuring out this room's potential.

My first goal was to take the back off of my bookshelf. I never realized the dramatic change this simple action would make until we put in the Billy bookshelves in our book room back in April. When two of the bookcases came without the backs (oops), we decided that the shelves actually look so much better without them. Being able to see the wall color through and behind your books/items makes the shelves look much less cheap and much more "built-in." The reason why I decided to do it with this bookshelf, though, is because of how dark the wall color is. Although the white pops against it, the black really doesn't. I had originally been toying with the idea of painting the desks, cart, and bookshelf all white....but then realized what a waste that would probably be. Waste of both time and money. So I took the black back out of the bookshelf instead, hoping that it would lighten it just enough to make it look better in here.

My second goal was to figure out the furniture layout that would be best. It took several tries (praise the Lord for lightweight Ikea furniture and really hard-to-scratch wood floors).

My first instinct was to buddy the desks up back to back. I mentioned before how narrow they are and I liked the idea of a bigger workspace that's not making you feel quite so face to face with the wall. But it stuck out way too awkwardly into the room and just didn't seem functional. Plus there are the logistics of the metal legs not matching up with each other, and the rolling filing cart only being the depth of one desk, not two of them buddied up. So I went back to a long desk option...and got super frustrated.

I wanted to take advantage of that long wall and put the bookshelf, the two desks and the filing cart all side by side by side. And I came so stinking close to making it work.

Missed it by that much.

It would have worked if I'd moved the bookshelf to the other wall, but by that time I was remembering the matching bookshelf I had sitting with no purpose in a different room in the house, and I realized I needed to figure out how to make both bookshelves fit in this space to maximize storage possibilities. And after some standing with my hands on my hips and serious thinking, this is what I came up with:

It's perfect. No more claustrophobia while working (I'm not facing the wall at all anymore), the legs all match up right, and it makes that wall feel longer by not cramming it full end to end. After this, I just had to move that cart to a better place (to the left corner of this picture against the wall), take the back off of the other unused and unloved bookshelf in the next room and move it into place. The hubs just had to help me attach the bookshelves to the walls before I could put things on them, and then I could start organizing in all those beautiful bins.

Here's the final product:

Please excuse "You've Got Mail" playing on my laptop.

Some close-ups and explanations:

The bins are each organized by item (fabric, paint, random craft supplies, etc.), and help keep the shelves looking a lot better by giving all of those items designated homes. It also helps me because when I'm feeling lazy, I just have to throw an item into its bin and it won't leave a mess like throwing it on the floor or on the desk does. Each shelf is organized as well: the paint shelf with all my craft paint supplies, the random craft shelf with supplies like buttons, glue, and Popsicle sticks, etc. All my resources from teaching are together too - in the binders - for whenever I need to access them again (they were in boxes in the closet before). That top shelf with all the glass bottles isn't our liquor cabinet; I collect empty wine and whiskey bottles as well as empty candle jars, mason jars, etc. so I can recycle them in projects in the future. The pencils, paint brushes and such you see in mason jars were already organized that way long ago, so they were no extra cost or effort for this project.

The labels you see on each bin are made from the card stock I used for the DVD storage project, and I just used simple twine I already had on hand to tie them on.

The desk itself is neat and tidy, and that's how I want it to stay. The printer and laptop are the only office-related items allowed on there to give me a consistent clutter-free and large workspace. Even though a picture frame, mug with often-used pens, and that cute plant are on the desk too, I put them all inside a tray (which was our mail spot for the kitchen counter in a former life) to keep them all contained and in one spot.

It's not a very attractive pic but it's an oldie and a goodie, and one of my favorites.

You may have noticed in one of the pictures that only one of the two desks has drawers. You may have also noticed that I arranged them so the drawers are on the opposite side as my chair and computer. Although I would like to say that there's some grand and intelligent reason for this...there's not. When we first bought the desks back at the old house, we arranged them in an L, and one overlapped the other. It made no sense to install drawers that wouldn't be able to open because the other desk would be in the way, so we put the drawer parts in a closet and forgot about them. Well, here we are with two perfectly functioning drawer slots and only one set of drawers...because someone threw the directions out. (Me. I threw the directions out.) It probably wouldn't be too difficult to figure out, but I just haven't ever felt the need to tackle that yet. One day I will, and I'll have that much more storage and I'll love it. The reason why the drawers we do have are on the other side of the desk are just because I liked having the metal legs on the outside and the solid legs on the inside. The solid legs seemed too abrupt and made the room smaller, while the see-through metal legs lets you see all the way under the desks and the continuation of the floor makes the room seem bigger (brought to you by many hours of watching HGTV).

So there you have it! My new office space, which I'm really excited to use and have organized. My absolute favorite part about this room is that I used everything that we already had. Between repurposed cloth bins, empty bookshelves needing love, and small craft supplies I already had on hand, I literally didn't spend a dime on anything except the plant. As someone trying to figure out the logistics of budgeting and saving money that would normally be used unwisely, this feels like a major accomplishment. I still have some things to hang on the wall (bulletin board, white board, some pictures) but I'm going to wait to show you those pictures until I hang curtains. Yep, I've been asking guests to stay in a first floor room with no curtains all this time. But they're coming soon! And so will pictures.