Sunday 26 February 2006

Office Reorg

Tina and the boys traveled up to Goderich this past weekend to give Adam some space and time to reorganize the office. The office consists of a large desk, a computer (and all related hardware), filing cabinet, bookcase, toys and a closet. It is also used as a guest bedroom (we purchased one of those air mattress beds with the fold out frame). However, the room was getting a wee bit disorganized. It needed more shelving (it had none) and stuff needed to be sorted (stay, garbage, yard sale/eBay). Adam finally decided that enough was enough and set aside a weekend to reorganize the room.

The first step was to take as much out of the office. Next task was to pull out the old shaggy carpet. It was very easy to do since the carpet was laid on top of the parquet flooring, but the amount of dust underneath was disgusting. It's amazing that we were able to live in that room. With the carpet gone, Adam spent some time moving furniture around seeing what fit best. Once the ideal layout was found, Adam drove over to Home Depot to buy some shelving and other items. He installed the shelving (3 shelves at 6 feet each) above the desk. The idea was that the first shelf would be occupied by computer hardware (printer, scanner, DVD burner, etc). The other two shelves would be used to put toys, books and other items up and away from the boys. Adam also installed a small shelf about 8 inches above the floor behind the desk. This shelf would hold all the power cords and bricks - keeping them off the floor away from prying hands and making it much easier to vacuum.

With the shelves and furniture in place, Adam began organizing. All the computer equipment was placed and connected. The bookcase was given a decent once-over, freeing up almost one shelf. To free up some room in the filing cabinet, Adam purchased a paper organizer from Staples. The organizer has 12 (3 x 4) places or slots for legal-sized paper. All the various papers we use plus any labels, photo paper, and envelopes went in the organizer. The closet was next. Adam discarded any summer clothes that had zero chance of ever being worn. All the eBay/yard sale was temporarily placed beside the desk to either be photographed or taken to the crawl space.

There is a tremendous amount of free storage space in the office. Tina and the boys were surprised by the office reorg. The new layout increases the amount of open floor space. Adam still has to finish sorting through the filing cabinet, a box of odds and ends, and all the eBay/yard sale stuff. A rug to prevent the boys from slipping and cutting down on noise is an interim design upgrade. In the future, all the floors, trim and doors will be redone and the walls repainted. That could be as early as this year or the year after.

The project took a little more than two days to complete (in between watching TV, browsing the net and playing some PS2). This did include cleaning and dusting our bedroom, cleaning the bathroom (including the bathtub), tidying and vacuuming the living and dining rooms and a quick tidy of the kitchen. Adam had wanted to clean up the basement but that will be another weekend project.