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I have my work space set in the living room: a very simple space with a Ikea desk and a drawer. While I want a proper desk and a space for me working from home, I still want to spend time with my daughter in a same room. Thus my choice was to have a small office space in our living room. Since I know it’s only temporary, I went to IKEA for very simple white desk. Now my daughter has the same desk, next to mine :-)
All the small things that I need at my desk like PC gadgets, stationary and daily household items are stored within my reach. This way, even when I’m piled up with paper works and other things, I can still easily tidy up my working space. But of course since you cannot store everything within your reach, we got to choose first what we want keep around you. And only afterwards, go look out for a good storage container or divider. Many people falls into a trap to rush out of their doors and look for these containers and dividers first when they had urges to organise their spaces. Great. So you found a series of good-looking baskets and put your things there and felt proud of yourself. Maybe for the days or a few weeks. As days go by, our possessions grow and wherever we find spaces (within that good looking basket) we can easily fill that space. And months later, we find the once “organised” spaces are cluttered again. So look out for another containers? Sigh… Well, no matter how many times you try to organise your space, it is easy to be trapped into this endless loop. Therefore it is important to really look into what you want to achieve, what do you need in your current lifestyle at your current home. What you need around your desk when you are working and a stay-at-home mum may be different. What your children need around their desk shift as they grow. So before you heads outside to hunt organising items, organise your mind.
When I first wrote this post, I had one of the drawers for temporary bills and receipts storage and one empty drawer as a haven(!) for sudden guests or new toys I want hide away for a while from my then-3yrs-old daughter.
The lowest drawer was for her that was easily accessible for her then; I put her stationary, crayons, stamps and origami that she used often in the living room. Here I use Daiso white mesh tray, a very inexpensive way to organize small things.
But I made sure not to overstuff each trays. Dividers work really well for certain people and less for the others. If you think dividers don’t really work for you, i.e. you tend to mix things up in the end even after you installed your dividers, review the amount of your possessions and keywords for each category. For some people, an action-based keyword may work. For example, make groups like “stickies” for glue, clips, stapler: “cut” for scissors, knife, letter opener: “write” for pencils, pens, permanent makers: “scribbles” for coloured pens, or water colour pencils (you may want coloured pens to be grouped under “write” then do so), and such categorisation may work better over your current grouping by shapes.
Oh, please note that for the picture above I used different grouping. Hope you got my point :-)
Going back to the Daiso mesh container, as you can see, they fits just right in the drawer. Good things was that my daughter can take out a whole tray when she draws and do crafts. She knew where they were, where to return, and that way she started to learn how to keep herself little more organised. Of course she is still learning so am I :-) Now we use the drawer differently and hope I can share more in coming posts.
Happy Organising Singapore!
ERI
Make some space for your mind, and live your life at ease.
About ERI, a Singapore-based Organised LifeStyle Consultant -> About and Services
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