August 23, 2009

• It's a gray day today.  I don't mind.  It is not hot out, so I will take the gray.  Of course, I am supposed to go yard saling with a friend and this gray and rainy looking day may put a damper on the sales we find....However, I am hoping we will be able to persevere and have some fun anyway!

  Yesterday, we met up with a family we know and went swimming at a really nice spot a couple of towns over.  I don't have the pictures off the camera yet, but I will get them off soon.  I had no idea we had such a nice swimming hole (on public land) so close to our house.  It took us less than 30 minutes to get there and I am guessing it will be a place we frequent.

  You have heard lots of talk lately of my efforts to purge around the house.  I actually took some before pictures of the office area in our dining room....and now I have some after pictures too.

  Brace yourself, the before picture is pretty awful, and embarrassingly enough, we have spent months and months with the office table in that state of disarray. (I would try to clean it now and then, but only would make a dent in the mess, not actually an big improvement.)

  Before:

  

  After:

  

  Amazing, isn't it?!

  I replaced the table with a smaller table we had.  The whole reason I had used the bigger table was to allow for a work space next to the computer, but as you can see that idea was misguided.  The horizontal surface just accumulated papers.  I eliminated lots of the horizontal surface in hopes of minimizing the pileup.

  I also repurposed a wooden trunk box by taking off the hardware, turning it on it's end and painting it purple.  It now serves as a cupboard.  It's not beautiful, but it is functional and does the job for now.  It helps a lot to have place for things to go. Actually, that's the theory behind the shelf on the table too.  I decided to go vertical with storage and now we have a basket for all the USB cords, power cords, etc. that were heaped on the table.  We also have baskets for games and another for installation CDs.  And the two blue trays on the bottom are basically in and out boxes.

  Plus, the shelf gave dh's birthday dutch oven a home too!

  Oh, and I cleaned up the walls too.  The artwork that was up that I wanted to save is ready to be filed (I have a binder of Nature Boy's art.).  The calendar got moved, little post-it's of phone numbers and addresses got added to the address book.....Basically, I took the time to do all the little jobs (like entering things into the address book) that cleared up lots of the stuff.

  I also took down the bulletin board behind the desk.  We used it to hold important papers that really should have been filed.  I figure if we just file them when we get them, then we won't have the mess on the bulletin board. (Crazy theory, eh?)  And I rediscovered the bulletin board is backed by a chalkboard.  So, I reversed it and hung it and you can see it is set up as a grid.  That will be our new chore chart.  (As a matter of fact, I do believe today is chore assignment day!)

  So, a lot of filing, shredding, moving, repurposing, purging and organizing has led to a much more pleasing and functional office space.  I am satisfied with the results.

  This is the kind of purging that I have been doing lately, in closets, on bookshelves, in our bedroom....I am trying to get rid of stuff that is weighing us down and reorganize what we need.  And I am trying to make spaces that are not just functional but aesthetically pleasing.  The office area is not necessarily so pretty looking....but let's face it, it is much more pleasant to look at than that awful before picture!

   

  • 7:24 am
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