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Hard at Work
| Walk on Wood |
| Hard at Work |
| Keep Out the Cold |
| Bursting into Bloom |
| Design Trends |
| PAST ISSUES |
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Photography by Blue Tack Photography, courtesy of Karen Hott Interiors |
Chaos before order. Tax papers, the business license, client paperwork—it’s all in a pile somewhere, right? If you’re doubtful, you may need to get professional about your home office. Here are a few examples to get you on the road to success, and that road runs through well-labeled file cabinets, jars of highlighters and pens, bulletin boards and plastic bins of every shape, size and color.
Just enough space
Ann Walsh is a fairly organized person, but when the bills and paperwork started piling up, she decided to buy an office armoire (she found this one at Ballard Designs’ outlet center).
Walsh decided to keep the armoire in her living area just off the kitchen. “This house is huge and has such an odd layout, so the kitchen is where we live,” she says. She also likes being able to pay bills or plan out her day while her toddler daughter plays on the rug.
“The armoire works for Ann because she is very diligent about making sure the clutter doesn’t pile up. It bugs her so she takes care of it. It also works because she doesn’t save much paper in her life,” says Allison Carter of The Professional Organizer.
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Dos and Don'ts of an Armoire Office Remember to keep it tidy! Even though you can close the doors, it’s not ideal to work in a total mess. 1. Do use baskets or bins to store small items such as stationery and stamps, CDs, manuals, cords and whatever you need during your bill sorting. 2. Do write to-dos in an easy-to-see, easy-to-reach location. 3. Do keep your planner front and center so you can always write down your appointments and reminders. 4. Do keep photos and decorations to a minimum or they turn into clutter. |
5. Do label your files or they become a big black hole for papers. 6. Don’t leave things on the bulletin board forever. Once the item is done, take down the paper. If you never get around to it, perhaps it’s not that important. 7. Don’t cram little papers and knick-knacks between bins or behind the computer when you don’t know what else to do with them. That’s the biggest cause 8. Don’t drop things into the deep door pockets. You’ll never see them again. Use these pockets for tall, easy-to-see items. Source: Allison Carter, The Professional Organizer |
A huge benefit of this system is that you can close the door if you are in the middle of a project and company comes to visit. However, Carter cautions people who want to go for the armoire solution. “Armoires don’t work very well for people who like to pile and spread out. There just isn’t room for it,” she says. “They also don’t work when you have more than one drawer’s worth of paper that you need to reach easily.”
Carter also cautions against the most common armoire mistake—don’t stuff papers deep into pockets, behind the monitor or on the very back of shelves. You might lose them forever!
Share and share alike
Space in our homes, no matter how large, inevitably becomes an issue as children grow up, jobs change or hobbies take up space. Creative Organizing and Design helped one homeowner, Kristy Packer, merge her office space with her children’s craft area, which also got her kids involved in creating and maintaining a working system. “My office was a mess. I was just piling things on the desk, and throwing other things in the closet,” Packer says. “Wherever I left the paperwork is where I would work on it later. If I could find it!”
“I have tried in the past to organize,” she adds. “Each time, things would go back to the way they were, or I couldn’t find what we ‘organized’ because my technique didn’t make sense to me. I also wanted a comfortable space of my own that was aesthetically pleasing. I didn’t just want a bunch of plastic totes to store items. The space also needed to be kid-friendly. The kids needed to understand how the systems would work.”
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So, in addition to creating an intuitive filing system that worked for the family, Jamie Dastou and Monica Swanson, owners of Creative Organizing and Design, created an activity that both mom and the girls could do that keeps the system in
place, and gets the girls used to organizing and getting rid of lots of paper.
“We created an activity for the family relating to the kids’ artwork, which was to store it all in the designated bins until a new grading period. At that time, the family picks one of their favorite projects each girl completed and then displays it on the wall of art we designed in the home office,” Dastou says. “So, the idea of this is the girls pick a total of four of the best pieces of art projects and display them at every grading period. This helps them purge some of the other work so clutter isn’t created.”
To help round out the new room, Dastou and Swanson replaced the one old desk with a computer desk and a writing desk, so both mom and the girls each have their own workspace. Finally, Packer told the organizers she is a very visual person, so they created a bulletin board collage that separates each girl’s activities, invites, school meetings and papers. “By creating this, we eliminated clutter on the desk and kitchen counter and centralized everything in one location that’s easy to see and read,” Dastou says.
The fully functional office
Christine Barnes, a local interior designer, frequently meets with families who have kids in tow, and she really needed a dedicated, dynamic and professional area of the house in which to meet with them.
“I knew that my clients had children and had asked in the past if they could come too. I wanted a nice area for mom to be relaxed and a safe place for her child to play but still be nearby,” Barnes says. “I also teach classes in interior design, so I needed a working space.”
When she and her husband were determining what to do with the unused attic space in the garage, she knew it would be the perfect place for her studio. Together they created several crucial elements to make her office functional for both parents and children.
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