An Inspiring and Organized Home Office

Of all of the organized spaces in blogland, I find myself drifting toward home offices most often. There’s just something about a beautiful and organized office space that makes me giddy, and today’s installment of the My Favorite Organized Space series is definitely no exception! My sweet and talented friend Amy from 11 Magnolia Lane is here to give us a tour of her gorgeous (and organized!) home office, and I promise you will come away inspired! Here’s Amy:

---

Hi everyone! I am Amy from 11 Magnolia Lane and I am so excited to be here sharing my favorite organized space with you all. It has been a pleasure to get to know Abby over the last few years both virtually and in person; she is always inspiring — both professionally and with her mad organizing skills!

My favorite organized space is my home office. This space is my ‘command central’ for both my business and my home. Thanks to the fun pink and black/white decor {inspired by one of my favorite style icons–Kate Spade} this space is also my happy place!

How do you use this space?

I spend most of my working hours in this space, I do everything website-related, run my organizing products business and manage all our family ‘stuff’ from here–it is pretty much ‘command central’ both for my business and our home.

What are some systems you use to keep the space organized?

I started decorating the space with inexpensive furniture from IKEA and HomeGoods, and I was lucky enough to find the vintage console at a furniture auction. It is one of my favorite pieces of furniture ever, though it looks very different from the ‘before {the whole transformation is HERE}. It was originally designed to be a dining room buffet but I repurposed it to hold all my office essentials including papers, office supplies, pens and more. It provides a ton of great storage with built-in shelves and drawers, it keeps all my supplies neatly tucked away yet right at hand.

After painting the piece, I lined the console drawers with colorful shelf paper and added some small storage bins to keep things neatly together. This drawer holds stationery, pencils and file labels.

The other drawer keeps all my small office supplies neatly in one place. I added some pink and some black and white scrapbook paper to the bottom of all the phone and tablet boxes I’d been collecting {see the how-to HERE} so they matched my color scheme. This was essentially FREE drawer organization and now all my office supplies don’t get jumbled up inside the drawers. I store things like wash tape, business cards from contacts, scripture cards and small envelopes in this drawer.

The IKEA wall shelves {I jazzed the brackets up with a little gold spray paint} above the console are mostly for display purposes, I like to surround myself with things that inspire me and have special meaning while I work. The white boxes store cards and photos. I am always tweaking the shelves to display pretty things, like a framed “hello” notecard a friend sent me, these small touches make the room a happier space.

I hung two gold clipboards on the wall; they are a scheduling essential. One holds a 2016 calendar and the other a monthly calendar. Because 11 Magnolia Lane is a joint effort with my bestie, Christy, we have to constantly coordinate who does what and when, so calendars keep us on track. The clipboards are too pretty not to display, and I know right where they are now that they are on the wall, no digging for them in piles on my desk!

In complete “Kate Spade” style, this cute black and white striped box {below} that even came with a pink top– a lucky HomeGoods find–holds files as do the other IKEA organizers on the shelves. I keep business-related files in one large IKEA box, and store gift bags in the one on the other shelf.

Speaking of the other shelf, below you can see the one on the other side of the window. Again, a little gold spray paint made a huge difference in these inexpensive IKEA shelves. There isn’t much space between the window and the wall so they allowed me to add vertical storage to maximize the space.

What are some systems that make the space functional + beautiful?

The white desk where I sit to work came from HomeGoods. I love the simple, clean lines and that it has two small drawers in it for convenient storage.

The desk drawers are filled with all the things I use daily…notepads {I am a compulsive list-maker, I am sure that doesn’t surprise you!}, labels and stickies for The Calendar Pads, my favorite set pens and notecards.

In the drawers I use small trays that came from The Container Store, they are perfect for holding tiny things like thumbtacks, paper clips and binder clips. This desk came with the greek key lining in the drawers, hello–perfection–but the drawers are very shallow, so these small blue trays fit them perfectly.

What is it about the space that makes it your favorite?

I read in Marie Kondo’s book: The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up that once you create a system, if it is a good system, things will stay neat. In this space I am finding that to be true. For as much time as I spend in here, now that everything has a proper place for the most part it all stays in order. It creates a calm, organized space for me to be both creative and productive.

You can see more on this space at 11 Magnolia Lane. Thanks Abby, for letting me visit today. Have a happy summer everyone!

XO,

---

Isn’t her organized home office stunning?! All of those office supplies suddenly make me want to run off and raid the school supply aisles at Target! 🙂 I can’t wait to incorporate some of Amy’s brilliant ideas into my office space in our new house, and I hope you’re coming away inspired too.

If you’d like to follow along with the rest of the My Favorite Organized Space series, you can do so in these posts:

A Beautiful, Organized Kitchen by Abby at Just a Girl and Her Blog

A Neat and Tidy Entry Closet by Ginny at Organizing Homelife

A Fun, Organized Garage by Becky at Organizing Made Fun

A Beautifully Organized Living Room by Lauren at Bless’er House

An Inspiring and Organized Home Office by Amy at 11 Magnolia Lane (You’re here!)

An Incredibly Organized Garage by Samantha at Simply Organized

A Playful and Organized Boy Room by Angela at Blue i Style

A Perfectly Organized Mudroom by Erin at Sunny Side Up

A Creative and Organized Home Office + Craft Room by Megan at The Homes I Have Made

Have a wonderful day!