making room for little sister: home office

Who knew it would take so much rearranging, furniture moving, and reorganizing to make space for such a wee little one? It has taken us several weeks to complete, but all the work was worth it for two reasons. Reason number one...all the reorganizing allowed us to create a room just for Little Sister. Reason number two...we have been in this house for three solid years (a record for us) and there were things that just needed reorganized, tossed out, and moved around. I like having things in their place and spaces that make sense and are functional. Things seem to make much more sense around here now!

I wanted to share all this rearranging with ya'll....so I am going to do it in a series of sorts showcasing the changes we have made and leading up to big reveal of Little Sister's room. I had to add a little drama to the blog, I mean who doesn't love a little drama;) Up first is our home office. Enjoy!

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Home Office

I am not even sure you can call it a home office....more like a dumping ground. And when I say this room was a dumping ground that is an understatement. Basically, since we moved in (three years ago) things that didn't find a home anywhere else ended up in this room. It was a complete hodge podge of junk and barely even functioned as an office. No one, except our cat Lucy who loved to lay in the old office chair, spent any time in the room.

Honestly, I am embarrassed to even show these before pictures. It was bad. We knew it was bad. But didn't really know what to do with it all.

Once Little Sister entered the picture, we knew we wanted to turn our office/junkyard into her bedroom. That meant everything in the room must go and be relocated to somewhere else in our house. ugh. that would be no small task. We put off cleaning out the room for as long as we could.

First, we had to come up with a place to relocate our home office...specifically the computer. We wanted it some place where it could actually be used. With our computer in the office upstairs it got little use. The girls never used it because if they had a problem and needed help they had to come downstairs to get help and then we had to run up there....it didn't work. It was just plain frustrating. Over time it just didn't get used at all. We also wanted it in a more central location so we could monitor their usage and make sure they weren't getting into something they weren't supposed to. We decided we wanted it in our main living space, the problem was coming up with a desk that was the right size...large enough to be functional and small enough to fit.

We had a small desk in the garage for over a year that I had pulled out of my parents basement to repaint and put in Ellie's bedroom. I hadn't gotten around to it yet. It seemed like the perfect solution. We brought it in and bingo it fit perfectly in the corner of our dining room. Of course it needs a new paint job...I am thinking green to match our high chair.

Not all of our office equipment fits in our dining room, what didn't fit got moved to the basement. We know this set up may not work for everyone and it may not work for us forever. But for now it is working great for us. Here is a list of things that we are lovein' about the new office set up........

#1 The computer is actually being used.
#2 We have pictures as the screen saver and we enjoy watching them.
#3 The three drawers allow us a place to put things away.....the girls have the top drawer, bills and paperwork go in the second until I file them away once a month, and cords and other techy stuff go in the bottom. So far it works great!
#4 It fits well in the space and doesn't seem to be in the way at all.
#5 When it gets it's new paint job it will be really cute!

Hope ya'll enjoyed the first installment of my little making room for little sister series.....I will be back later with our hallway closet reorganization. I know ya'll will just be on the edge of your seat waiting for that!! :)