Office Organization

It can be really tempting to have that junk drawer/cupboard/room but i've made it my mission to make all of the storage space in my house fully functional and not just a dumping ground. Here are some of my top tips as well as the storage solutions i use.

The majority of the storage solutions in our house are from one of three places; Amazon, Target or The Container Store (aka heaven). For our office cupboard, the majority is from the latter two.

I wanted to go for simple, bright storage options that would fit with the rest of the house and lucked out with finding exactly what i needed online.

For the smaller items that i wanted grouped into specific sections, i went for these Nordic Baskets from The Container Store. I decided to go for lids on these in case i wanted to stack the smaller size on top of them in the future if i needed more space but you can also buy them without.

To label them i just used my paper cutter to slice blank note cards into the right size then hand-wrote the labels and tied them on with bakers twine. You could definitely do something more permanent and fancy but i like this option so i can easily change them if i need to.

For these lower shelves that are a little bigger and had larger items in them, i went for these woven storage baskets from Target (the white isn't available online any more but the grey and black are).

These bins are useful for larger items, toys, games or anything that can just be tossed in together. If you had wider shelves, they'd be nice arranged width-ways too!

I wanted to have paper somewhere easily accessible but still organized so i picked up three of these stacking wire trays (shallow medium) from The Container Store to separate card, paper and mailing labels. They also have other sizes in these if you wanted to use them for other purposes like produce/ toiletries etc.

The only other things i have on display in the cupboard are my bulldog tape dispenser and some cute binder clips on top of our Epson printer as well as our Go board (the stones are in a basket with other board games, i just liked how this looked out on the surface).

Here are the basic steps i generally use when organizing any area of the house! Be sure to share your own in the comments!

1. Figure out any additional storage you need. Although we had these shelving units, they're not the best for smaller items since they just end up thrown into their relevant cubby hole. I went for some large woven totes as well as some smaller ones so i can easily take out a box at a time. Theres no need to buy all new storage if thats not an option for you either, i've used empty subscription boxes, shoe boxes and anything else i could get my hands on (i wrapped them in vinyl if they were especially ugly).
2. Remove everything from the space. This might be storage boxes, shelves or a cupboard but removing everything from the space and assessing what you have vs what you actually need is much easier when its all laid out.
3. Look at each item before you return it to its home and group similar items together, in an office for example, this might be mailing supples/ travel documents/ stationery etc. Organize it in a way that makes sense to your brain.
4. Employ the use of labels if you have lots of similar looking storage, even though i know whats in each box this way so do others if they need to grab something! I like to use the dymo embossing label maker or just make my own with card, a hole punch and some pretty thread.
5. Go white. This is especially useful in small dark areas and will really brighten up the space and make it seem larger. Alternatively you could also go for things with horizontal stripes or just storage to match the rest of your house. Make that "junk cupboard" as pretty as the rest of your home!

As always, don't forget to log in to your Ebates account (i know i always appreciate the reminder) when shopping online in case they have cash back on the stores you're shopping from.

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Labels amazon basket box ebates go game home home design office organization printer scandinavian home storage storage ideas storage solutions target the container store tidy home