Organizing

So as you may or may not know I have been in my house round about 6 months now. I work from home and my home office is half work and half craft room. I didn’t have much in the way of formal organizing furniture in the apartment. Most of my craft tools were stored in a spare dresser. That dresser now lives in the guest bedroom and has the clothes of my brother and sister in the event that they ever decide to crash with us on a whim. Call me pragmatic, if you will. 🙂

Which brings me to my new challenge. Wednesday kicked off my get the craft room/home office cleaned up and organized effort. I took the doors off the closet and started pulling out the moving boxes. I brought a bookshelf up from the basement to temporarily hold my items, until I figure out what kind of storage thing we’re doing in there. It was nice to finally unload the moving boxes and find the items that had been missing for a long time like my sewing thread. I then decided to spend the evening looking for furniture to outfit this room.

My oak friend that I fell in love with yesterday is for the work portion of the room. Oak friend is a sturdy Amish bookcase measuring 4′ wide by 6′ tall. I was unable to purchase oak friend today because the store closes at 5pm most days. That’s fine I will get it Monday (the next day they are open late) or tomorrow if at all humanly possible (like I get a half day off work or something). I am getting it from the Amish store because they are going to work with me to stain it to match my desk that I inherited from my grandfather, they are a local business uptown and they’re cheaper than the unfinished wood furniture store (I factored in having the unfinished store do the staining).

I have a blue print of my end game for the home office/craft room. You can see it here:

Scale 1 block = 5″

My original intent was for the boy and I to build all this furniture so I could get the dimensions I want but well we’re busy people and I would like to get this and the other closets unpacked. I also happened to inherit a gorgeous desk from my grandfather that was almost exactly what I was looking for. Now I am in search of the carts to go next to the craft and sewing tables. I am leaning toward this cabinet from Hinterberg and something akin to this scrapbooking unit from Container Store or hmm even this one from Target (not that I am still looking as I write this post).

Now comes the big question: any advice? Do you know of any reputable places to get good quality organizational carts? I have given myself a budget for this project which a little over half will go to the bookcase, (what can I say hard and solid wood doesn’t come cheap 😉 ] If at all possible I would love to get the shelves and bench for the window wall into this same budget because then my room will be done. Oh and the laminate factor…you can’t stain laminate (or can you?) so I am trying to find stuff that will “go” with the bookcase and desk without clashing.

Also, any ideas for what to do in the closet? My first thought is to do a wall of cubes to put fabric and whatever else into. The boy seems to think that would be wasted space. Granted it wouldn’t be the whole closet because the closet stair steps up to the attic. Perhaps something that is about 6′ wide and 8′ tall.  Just a few questions, eh? 🙂 I really would love some input from folks out there who have done something similar or just know what is/isn’t a bad idea. I really look forward to any advice you can give me. 🙂