Organizing! It actually happened.

Well hey there.

So, long ago it was Christmas break, and I wanted to do some organizing around this dang house! (You can go back and read this blog post if you want a refresher on my many plans for the break, but I'm going to say most of it anyways.) Some of the things I wanted to do and did do was organize all of our closets and make a trip to DI. That, I did! It took a long time to get those closets clean... And it made our second bedroom a mess! I believe I have some pictures, too....

Here's our office when we first moved in:

So here is the office after Christmas.... after buying our crib for super cheap....

By the by, with the crib there, we couldn't even fit our chair at the desk. Problem? I think yes.

Sad to say, this isn't even the office at its worst. Another big problem with the office was that I would put our mail on the desk and forget about it. Somehow we still paid our cell phone bill on time? It was something that needed to change.

So, over Christmas break, not only did I have to clean out the closets, but I had to somehow fit our baby's stuff into that room. See our second bedroom is also our office, or nursery, our music room, our linen closet, our second closet for our clothes that overflow, and a place to house some random things. The most important functions for that room, though, are the office and the nursery. So, somehow we had to fit the furniture we needed in there, and the decorator/organizer in me wanted to have a semi cute room! A huge downfall of the adorable organizing blogs that I read and of Pinterest is that it makes me want to have beautiful rooms that are super cute, and between the room in our home and our bank account, that's out of the question. So, I had to make do!

Oh! But on the plus side, Jed got me for Christmas $30 toward decorations from IKEA for the desk! What a great Christmas present, right? I wanted to make a cute desk just like my favorite blog: http://iheartorganizing.blogspot.com/ . Click here to see my inspiration for my office! You have to scroll down a lot.... but what I wanted for my desk was a mail station and the cute pencil cup storage.

Well, on passed Christmas break (and like I said, I DID actually clean out the closets), on passed February, and I still did nothing. The things we got from Ikea sat on the floor. Life was busy! The one thing we did was switch the desk and the crib, which worked a lot better! Also, for Christmas I was given a lovely glider rocker from my in-laws, so we were fortunate enough to sell our old recliner on KSL and we got to replace it with a beautiful recliner. So, my desire for a cute coordinated office was slightly closer. All the wood in my office has a slightly cherry color.

Then came my lovely bed rest..... And I was SO lucky that the Saturday before I had done a ton of organizing of my office supplies and the Monday before was President's day and we had taken the opportunity to get some things from Target and organize a bit. Thank goodness I didn't procrastinate any longer than that! So the day after I was put on bed rest, Jed was amazing enough to make me feel better by hanging all my IKEA stuff! So by the time I was on bed rest, I was lucky enough to have almost everything organized! Whew!

So here is the thing that is my pride and joy from my Monday purchases/organizing: my itso modular storage. You buy one cube at a time and they connect. Then, you can buy shelves to snap in, wheels if you want it to be mobile, even doors to cover the cubes. LOVE it! You can buy these things at Target. So, here's what we put together:

Our 5 cubes we put together

 Here are the trays/shelves we bought to organize all our baby things:

Don't you just love this storage? Modular storage that is deep enough to store things like a bin of toys and our diaper bags, but nice and neat and put away. I love it to death. Plus, when we move, we can set it up differently if need be. I love that.

So the next and biggest step that I had been dreading was this: organize my files. I had so many papers to go through... so many.... I knew a lot of the paper I had needed to be tossed. I also had a lot of papers I knew was important, but I didn't know why or what to do with it! In comes: my mom. I asked her to come help me for several reasons: I was on bed rest, so I was bored and didn't want to overdo anything; she is extremely knowledgeable when it comes to running a home and finances; and last, if I scheduled a time to do it, it would have to be done!

In the days before, and I mean days, I did a little at a time. I didn't want to overdo, because physically I didn't want to cheat on my bed rest, and mentally, it made me feel better to not have hours of paper work to have to tackle!

I threw out tons of paper, tons. Once I knew that the rest of the papers I had were worthy of saving, I made these:

You can't see it, but what I did was took my husband's sketch pad because the papers were extra big, and I put categories on each, things like finances, insurance/medical things, job stuff, and even a "not sure what to do with but I know I need it" category. Then I put all my papers into their respective category. This made it so much easier for my mom to look at the papers for me, and if I had done it one my own, I could have easily put my papers in my filing box from there.

Speaking of my filing box... I prepped that for my mom, too!

Yes, terribly exciting, I know.

So, my mom came, and brought her LABEL MAKER with her! I love label makers. I hope to get one for Christmas or a birthday someday. It is a blessed thing. So, with my mom's help, we went through the categories, created a label for the hanging file folders, and then labeled some manila folders to further organize the papers. Oh it felt so good! AND because I had pre-categorized my papers, I was able to go lay down part way through when my good friends Sam and Evan came to visit me, but she was able to keep organizing! Awesome. So here is my beautiful filing box:

Nice and full and organized! I will never again have to search for important papers. Also, as I get important things (like work done on our car, insurance, taxes), I have a place for them! It feels wonderful.

I also made my mail station!

You can't really see what we labeled them, but we labeled the folders "To Do ASAP," "To Do," "To File," and "Coupons." So now, when I get mail, I will go through it THAT SAME DAY and then I can throw away things, put them in the folder of things I need to do now, sometime soon, or to file away. Now the paper won't clutter our desk!

I also now have a place to put receipts! We keep this in the mail station:

So do you want to see the whole product??!!

Here it is!

This cute caddy my mother made. Everything you need to change a diaper, right there!

Here's the desk! My pride and joy.

And here's a closer look...

These just stick to the desk, so you can keep your cords up on the desk and not have to worry about them falling behind!

This you may recognize from the iHeart Organizing blog. I love this way of organizing all my pens and pencils!

Notice how neat the labels look? LABEL MAKER!

So now everything has a place in our desk! It feels sooo good! It's great, too, because now when Jed or I need to find something, either we can look for just a minute and find it because I labeled most everything, or I can direct him to it because I know where everything is now! Also, I feel just a little better because I have a cute desk. I can't have my dream office with perfectly coordinated stuff and I can't have my dream nursery with adorable decorations, but I can get a little piece of it!

Hope you enjoy seeing my life become organized as much as I enjoy it. I have a feeling I will be referring to this blog post a lot, just to see the wonderful progress!

Have a great week!