My little office sits just off the kitchen, with the door on the right (see that bit of trim?) leading to the pool house.  It’s not a huge or grand space, but it does everything I need.

At least it does now.  The before was slightly bigger, shaped like an L, with a smaller door out to the pool.

As an extension of the kitchen, we remodeled the office along with the kitchen.  Deep, wide drawers make organizing any room a dream, and I quickly filled each one up as soon as the office was functional again.

My original placement worked just fine for almost two years, but I’ve been taking on more graphic design work and it just wasn’t cutting it anymore.  Especially after Christmas where things got tossed in and the drawer closed.

The top right drawer, seen above, was a mixture of office staples and craft supplies organized into clear dividers.  Notebooks, paper, and important documents were in the top left drawer.  One day, not too long ago, I grabbed a pen from the right drawer and a notebook from the left and realized it was annoying.  Sorting by like items wasn’t the most efficient use of the space, or my time.  I started by reading through the few organizing books I have, Real Simple: The Organized Home and Organizing for Your Lifestyle and it sparked a change.

With a bit of extra time this week, I was able to empty out everything, donate/toss what I no longer used, and load everything left back in.  This time, by like use.  Pens, paper, scissors, tape, rubber bands, and other often reached for basics all live in one drawer now.  Cute file folders hold important client info and kids school papers.

Below, the middle drawer is my packing and shipping center, filled with mailing labels, envelopes, packing and cute tape.

The tall bottom drawer stows important files, my camera and bag, and a bin of craft paints.

Basically, the right side is the business side, whereas the left is filled with craft supplies.  one of the original clear dividing trays holds paint brushes, a wood burner, polymer clay, sewing basics, and glues.

A lidded adjustable compartment box is perfect for keeping the smaller craft items like embroidery floss, tiny brads, glue sticks, paint tubes, and more corralled.  But it’s still easy to grab and move to another area to do some crafting.

The middle drawer is still pretty empty, with just my paper-cutter and the boys’ computer inside.

But the bottom one is chock full of papers.  White card stock, colored card stock, carbon paper, and printer paper.  Cardboard magazine files keep everything sorted and in place.  The two on the far left hold the favorite school documents and art from the boys, with a manila folder inside to sort by year.

Grouping all items by use keeps everything I need for a task in one area.  How do you organize your home?