Home Organization Week Four: The Office (Several Weeks Late!)

office: n :  place where business is transacted.

And, believe me, there is an awful lot of business transacted in this office!  Some fun, some not so much.

We live in a double-wide mobile home in a mobile home park owned by my dear father-in-law.  Since he lives miles and miles away, our family's lot in life is to keep the place running.  And the office/book work is my part to play.

When we moved in this home five years ago, my office was in the room that is now my walk-in pantry, just off the kitchen.

When my youngest son married in 2009, I took over his bedroom as my office.  It was so good to spread out a bit. The room had red walls, and a light cream carpet.  It was down the hall, so it wasn't a great location for the first of the month rent collection.

But I repainted the walls and set up shop anyway.

The idea of adding an exterior door to the room began forming in my head last winter.  It would be sooo convenient if tenants could come into an office to pay rent instead of having to be in my home.  I drew it all out on my trusty plan drawing program and presented it to my dear hubby.  And he made it happen!!

In the following pictures, we had already begun the work.  I'm terrible about taking before pictures.  Bookshelves are emptied, and a metal cabinet is moved out of it's spot where the new door is going.
Note the cream carpet. Not a good color for a high traffic area!

Bookshelves gone and a window and door cut in.

My oldest son, hard at work!

My hubby hard at work!

My youngest son, trying to get the place secure for the night.

This is what my office looked like when I walked in this past Monday morning.  A great space, but look at that desk!  I am terrible about putting off filing.  Why is that so hard??????

I have THREE computers. The one I work with now, replaced an older one which was about to crash, which replaced an older one which was about to crash!!  Neither of which have actually crashed . . .  All the important book work has already been backed up on the old computers, and all that is left are thousands of pictures!  Procrastination again!!

My plan is to have the newest older computer cleaned off and set up for my gran kids to play educational games on.  Another project.

This door was painted white. But, as in most mobile homes, most everything is built cheap.  These doors were a wood look, which means the wood grain was actually just paper glued to the door. After I painted, it started peeling off.  So I finished the peeling and, as you see in this picture, I need to paint the door again.  But if I waited until I had time to do that, this post would be months instead of weeks late!

And note the HUGE computer monitor!  Don't you just love the flat screens we have now?

So, here's my office cleaned up.  Desk cleared, junk put away, etc.  Still lots to do, but that'll have to do for now!!

My hubby got fancy on me and put these on the trim above the doors.

We used the "lick & stick" vinyl tile for the floor since it is such a high traffic area.  It's holding up great so far.

And here's a picture of  the "kitty" as two of my youngest grand daughters call it!  My mother-in-law painted all three of the paintings I have hanging in here.

So, as you can see, we've done a lot of work on the office, but there's still a lot to do.  Hopefully, life will slow down a bit after the beginning of the year and I'll get all my projects finished!

Hello Kitty Birthday Cake

First off, let me explain:  these are not the best photos, but since everyone, including myself, forgot their cameras, these are all I have!  They were taken with a phone camera.  What did we ever do without phone cameras, anyway???

This cake was made for my grand daughter's second birthday.  She ordered Hello Kitty, but since I have a wedding cake coming up with these roses, I need LOTS of practice.  So, we added a Hello Kitty to the cake and decorated with Hello Kitty, and had a Hello Kitty party with a rose cake!!

Kami didn't mind a bit!

She's just a little excited!!

Happy Birthday, Kami!!

More Fall Leaf Cookies

 I tried a different technique on these Fall Leaf Cookies.  I saw it on this blog earlier in the week.

Mine don't look quite as good as hers, but I have the whole autumn season to perfect it!!

Fall Leaf Cookies

 Fall Leaf cookies I made for my mother-in-law's birthday!

Hope you had a wonderful birthday!!

Home Organization Weeks One and Three: The Kitchen & Pantry

 

I fully intended to participate in the Home Organization series taking place over at A Bowl Full of Lemons. So much for good intentions! The series is in it's fourth week, and I'm just starting.  So I'm doing week 1 (the kitchen) and week 3 (the pantry) at the same time.  I don't have a garage, so I can skip week 2.  I'll make up week 4 (the office) by next week, hopefully.

My kitchen and pantry had to be done together, since I was turning the old office/dining room off my kitchen into a walk in pantry and shuffling a lot of things around.

I'll start with the room that became my pantry.

When we moved in, this room was the dining room.  It was way too small for my large brood, so we turned the family room into the dining room, then built a wall to separate this dining room from the living room.  I then used the room for my office until my last son at home got married.  When he left the nest, I turned his bedroom into my office and added a counter and an extra refrigerator to the old office, and made it part of the kitchen.  But the room itself was a bit useless and a complete waste of good space.  That really bothered me!  Eventually, I came up with the idea of turning it into a walk-in pantry.  I drew up a plan, trying to cram as much storage as possible into the room.  The problems: it's only 9.5' x 11';  it has a slider that we use to get to the back patio; it already had a counter and refrigerator that I didn't want to move; after subtracting the 2' wide counter, the dimensions left to work with were 7.5' x 9'; it already has very full shelves the length of the wall above the counter. So I decided to look for four 2' - 2.5' wide x 7' tall shelving units that I could put back to back.  But they needed to be nice since they would be seen from the kitchen.  Easier said than done, at least working with my budget!

Then one day last week, I made my regular stop by Front Page.  Front Page is a store that sells returns, mostly from JC Penny.  It has anything from clothing, to patio furniture, to kitchen appliances, to baby furniture.  And most anything in between.  I just happened to stop by on a day when they had most of their furniture on clearance.  I found a dresser for a baby's room, with a changing station on top, drawers and a door below, and shelves above.  My creative juices started working!  I ended up buying two of these babies.  I put them in the pantry back to back.  My sweet husband reinforced the shelves so they could hold more weight and I was in business!  (I think he thought I was a bit crazy at first, though!).

Anyway, here's how it turned out:

I bought new matching canisters to put on the exposed shelves.

Here are some shots of the drawers and door on the ends of the unit:

Lots of empty space!!

Here's a shot of the wall with the counter, frig and shelves.

 I absolutely love it!  Of course, when I started moving things into the pantry, it started this chain reaction which ended up with me practically rearranging my entire kitchen and cleaning out my walk-in storage/linen closet.  I'll try to explain how it all went down.

I also had three small drawers in my kitchen that held tape, glue, small tools, batteries, etc.  These drawers were crammed to over-flowing, making it difficult to find anything.  Most of it fit nicely in a bottom drawer in my new pantry, and what didn't belong there I put in a tool box I bought at Lowe's, which fits nicely under my sink.

I have two (or three, or four) sets of china dinnerware.  One set was my grandmother's and one set was a wedding gift.  Along the way, I have acquired another set and several parts of sets.  I have a real weakness for fine dinnerware.  Anyway, it was all crammed into my walk-in linen closet.  The picture actually makes it look better than it was!

Because the closet was so full, it was hard to get to my beautiful dishes, so I rarely used it.  Once I had my new walk-in pantry set up, the pantry cabinet in my kitchen was completely empty.  So I moved all my nice dishes there.  Of course, they didn't all fit!  So I then had to rearrange just about everything.

I love how easy it is to get to these dishes now!

My Tupperware/Rubber Maid (anything plastic) is now where my canisters of flour, sugar, brown sugar, etc. were, in an upper cabinet that's much easier to get to.

As you can see from the picture below, it definitely needed some help!  I hated that a cabinet I had to get something out of several times a day was down low and hard to get to.

My baking dishes are now where my Tupperware/Rubber Maid containers were.  Oops! Guess I didn't get a picture of that cabinet.  The remainder of my nice dishes are now where my baking dishes were!

And my stemware is where the coffee cups were..

Before:

And after:

My vitamin/herb cabinet was complete chaos!  Plus, it all wouldn't fit, so it was beginning to spill out on the counter below.  So I purchased a turntable and spice shelf at Wal Mart and now it all fits like it should.


Before:

After:

Earlier this summer, we replaced the floor covering in the kitchen and dining room.  At the same time, we also purchased new appliances.  The only problem was, the new refrigerator was larger than the space it had to fit.  So my dear hubby moved the tall cabinet that was beside the frig into what is now my pantry.  

Then, I found a tall cabinet on Craigslist that fit the space perfectly!  It's a different color than my cabinets, but once I get my cabinets painted (a winter project) no one will know the difference!  It is now home to my many cookbooks.  And no, my recipes are not organized yet so you'll have to excuse the mess!

Linen/Storage closet after the shuffle:

I actually added this shelf a couple years back for my tea collection, after my first organization stint, but I don't think I ever posted it.

Wow!!  Am I glad that all that work is behind me!  But I'm loving my new walk-in pantry and organized kitchen!!