Before & After of Good Housekeeping Contest Winner, Part 2

Part TWO of our report on the makeover done for the grand prize winner of the Good Housekeeping contest we had last fall... see Part One here for an overview and before & after photos on the garage portion of the project.

Part Two... The Home Office.

The winner's office problems had accumulated over time, about five years. Dana and I had a lot of conversations about perfectionism and "All-or-Nothing Thinking," which happens when people think that if they can't do it exactly right, they just won't do it. So procrastination starts and then overwhelm kicks in. Anyone relate? :) Here are the before and after pics! (click photos for a larger version)

We set up a filing system for her that she was thrilled about, and we created a workstation on the far right shelves (off the photo) for her home business inventory that was feeling cluttered near her desk. We focused hard on the systems involved in daily and weekly processes, and since she felt really comfortable with the systems in place, she was comfortable with going through a few remaining boxes of paper on her own (you can see those on the lower shelves).

One of the "danger zones" for people prone to clutter is open shelving. Now that so much room is clear on the shelves, we don't want that to become an undesignated space where people put things down "for now." To prevent this, you can introduce more decorative pieces to the room that can hold the space. Dana is going to get a large flower arrangement in front of the window and put some more reference books and decorative items on the shelves by the desk.

What do you think? All told we worked on the garage and the home office for a total of 31 hours in TWO DAYS! Boy, were we tired. Organizing is definitely time-consuming, but it is extremely rewarding too. And all the more fun when you get a $1000 shopping spree from the Container Store. Thanks again, Container Store Friends, for contributing to the GH contest! We used a lot of our "little stuff" in here, like the clear acrylic trays on the desk, some drawer dividers and hooks, and some bins that took away the "elsewhere" items to their new homes.

More tips and insights from Dana's projects in the weeks and months to come. I hope you've enjoyed seeing our work-- please comment if you are so moved!

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Comments

[Jeanette P]

It looks so STREAM-line and organized. Most of all, I feel like the room allows one to finally BREATHE and think CLEARLY! So KUDOs to YOU!! Embarrassingly enough, my office is 100X worse that the photo shown. You are an inspiration. I am a perfectionist and have the same issues with procrastination. But I'm ready to dig in and make the change. Thanks for sharing!

[Pat Garlikov]

An organization system that keeps things out of sight? Wow! Using accessories to display the space....I like it!

[Penny MacKay]

my study looks just like this. It is the fact that I need to go through all the piles of paper before throwing them away that holds me up. After an hour or so of working on them, I go into a feeling of panic, and have to stop! I also keep too many things that 'might come in useful'. How do you stop that?

[margaritamama]

My craft room looked worse than that. Called in a professional and in about 9 hrs. have made great progress. Not finished but soooo much better and got me going on some other stuff. Finally got to check 3 blogs tonight and 2 of them addressed some major problems for me. Perfectionism, procrastination and overwhemed describe me. Thanks, Lorie, for the good ideas and perspective.

[Alyssa]

Wow! Seems like not much storage was added but that maybe 80% of the stuff was either hidden or thrown away! Can you tell us what took the most time (for me, it's always trying to read things or do things before I throw something away) or what was the hardest thing to do? Thanks - this is such a great site!

[Lorie Marrero]

@Alyssa, yes, lots of stuff was thrown away or put away as it belonged elsewhere in the house. Old papers often end up being trash because they are out of date, so that is the good news when you are facing a project like this one. What took the most time was going through every item on the floor and on the flat surfaces. We did save lots of paper for later, but we still had to touch it all!

@Penny--about how to stop keeping things that might be useful someday... ask yourself if you have a system to find it later, because if not, it is pretty much useless. Also ask yourself if it is available online or if you can capture it somehow electronically for later (I like Evernote for saving little bits of information). Does this help?

- Lorie