Two weeks ago I said I would get back to you with my organizing plan on Monday, it is now Saturday.

One of the rules of goal setting that I learned a long time ago was to break any large project down into small pieces.

There are a lot of reasons for doing this.  I am less likely to be overwhelmed, I am more likely to finish something when I can see the end of it, I like having little goals to reach, things I can check off.  I works for me.

So, my office is a terrible disaster at the moment it looks like a filing cabinet and two toy boxes took turns exploding their contents at one another.  Not exactly conducive to work, peace or even walking safely across the floor.

This is an odd room.  It is NOT a rectangle it is some other quadrilateral with a column and a protrusion into the room.   All in all sort of weird shaped.  We have two desks and one table that serves as a third desk/workspace and two book shelves.  There are also bookshelves built into the protrusion.  (you probably have no idea what the room looks like now) Once upon a time this was a back porch.  It is a great room for my office.  I can see the kitchen and living room, I can hear most the house and look out on the backyard.  Very easy to keep tabs on the children no matter where they are.

This room is used for the following things:

I use this room to work, to play computer games and to manage the household
the children use this room to play, to study and do art projects.
This room is an exit point to the backyard, coats and boots tend to end up here in the winter and swimsuits and flip flops in the summer.
I need to be able to store homeschooling things, art supplies, bookkeeping information and references material for work.  The computers and printers are in this room and it tends to be that place where things end up when they don’t have a home.

Other than the “don’t have a home” issue there isn’t anything that I want to move from this room.

Right now the “big problems” in this room are toys, books and papers. 

One thing I had missed before taking my little survey of this room was the fact that the children use it as a “launch” pad for the back yard.  I need to set up a convenient way for them to store coats and backyard shoes/boots so these things don’t end up littering the floor.  I can move one small bookcase, put in some hooks and shoe storages and that should fix the problem.

The paper problem is mostly one of the childrens’ endless drawings and scrapes ending up all over the floor.  I need to set up a box where they can put their “stuff”.  Junk mail is occasionally an issue.  This is just a process thing.

I am setting up two toy boxes in here to deal with the toys.   Some of the less used art supplies are being moved. 

 So that is the basic.  This is where I pull out my mantra, Simplicity.  What do I NEED to be in this room. 
For my work I need the computer and printer, my desk the reference books.  These are the absolutely have to haves.  I also need my office supplies.  For homeschooling I need the children’s books, their notebooks and supplies.  I also keep my files in here.   Everything else is on the “questionable list”.