Clearing out the home office

Dreamy home office Image

One space in our home that needs constant vigilance that it not turn into a dumping ground is our home office.  When I say ‘our’ home office I really mean ‘my’ home office because it contains 99% my stuff and the other 1% is my husbands. 

We are fortunate enough to live in a spacious three bedroom home – we have the master bedroom upstairs and a guest bedroom and ‘the’ home office downstairs (they are next to each other).  I try to keep both rooms clear and pleasant to look at but because we don’t have a garage there are a few things that get stored in there that can’t go anywhere else.  They are:

• A few extra framed pictures

• Two clothing racks for drying clothing indoors

• A huge and beautiful gilt mirror that needs specialised hanging equipment because it weighs a ton and that’s the reason excuse why it’s not been hung since we moved in almost four years ago.

I also took possession of my spinning wheel recently which was living in my mum’s garage.  I didn’t realise she still had it and I used to really enjoy spinning so thought I’d have another go at it.  I actually took spinning lessons a long time ago, maybe when I was about 12 or 13.  Can you imagine today’s tweens taking spinning lessons?  It sounds like I am straight off Little House on the Prairie. 

I even carded my own wool then too.  These days you can buy it already carded.  For those of you who don’t spin, uncarded wool looks like a shorn fleece straight from the sheep whereas carded wool is all combed out and clean and ready to spin.

There are also a few spare furniture items such as a small square table and a set of plastic drawers (mmm, attractive, but they are useful).  Usually these items live in the guest room but when we have guests to stay they get moved to the home office.  And then other things get stacked around them ‘just for the time being’.

Before too long you can’t even enter the home office easily and any thoughts of doing some sewing, ironing or choosing a book from the book shelves becomes too stressful.  Last week was the tipping point.  My only answer for a situation such as this was to empty everything out.  I was at home by myself so I took all the items that shouldn’t have been there out into the hallway.

I could then have a proper vacuum (everywhere including the corners), appreciate the useful space that the home office is and then start putting things back.  I have a filing drawer that contains my style files.  These are pruned on a regular basis because I always have new things going in them.  Those new things were stacked haphazardly and now they are in with their subject matter friends.

I also decluttered a number of items including our Christmas tree – that will be donated closer to Christmas.  My plan is to purchase a small faux Christmas tree – the type with fibre-optic lights.  My parents-in-law have one and I love it, plus it’s simple, no decorating required.  I was going to donate all our decorations too but remembered that we might want to have a real Christmas tree from time to time so kept them for now.

It’s so nice to have space to move in the home office now and everything is neat, tidy and dusted.  Definitely worth a few hours of time as it feels so good afterwards.

Do you have a room that scares you at the moment?  Tell us all about it!