Creating my Home Office

One of the first big tasks on my list for the new home was getting my home office up and running. If you remember, it looked like this when we first moved in:

The walls were covered in a beige stripe wallpaper. It wasn't a bad paper, but it was peeling in a few places and since I knew I would need to be putting in a lot of screws and screw anchors (my pegboard alone needs 6) I decided that to do things right we should take down the paper.

So, on the Monday before my parents arrived, I started peeling the wallpaper.

I used a spray product called Dif, which was recommended by the employees at our good local paint store. Most of the wallpaper came off pretty easily, since it turned out the wall was completely textured underneath. I did have to work hard at the seams, where the paste seemed to be strongest, but overall it wasn't a bad project.

When the wallpaper was stripped, it was clear that the ceiling was actually a beige, not white. Since I planned to paint the walls a blue-gray, I had to paint the ceiling. So, I spent the next two days painting the ceiling, patching and painting trim, and finally painting the walls.

After three long days of working in this room, I got a smidge jealous of certain home bloggers whose husbands help with the painting -- I did all of this while Sean was at work! And my back and shoulders sure felt it.

Finally, with some help from my dad to hang the shelves and pegboard, here is what I'm working in:

There is still plenty of work to do in here, but at least now I can comfortably work at both the computer and the drafting table, and I can start unloading all those boxes of office books!

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A Bowl Full of Lemons

Conservation Monday #5: Reducing Waste in Other Rooms

It's Monday, which means it's once again time to share some conservation/waste reduction tips!

The last two weeks, we've looked at some ways to reduce waste in the kitchen and the bathroom. For us, these two rooms are the biggest waste generators. But today let's look at some other areas of the house where you may be able to cut down your waste and conserve resources.

Bedroom

1. Get Rid of Old Clothes. While you may not think of old clothes sitting in the closet as "waste," they are certainly wasting your space if you are not wearing them! If items are in good enough condition, and you have the time, you may be able to sell them online, to a place like Plato's Closet, or through another consignment store. Otherwise, donate! Free up that closet or drawer space for the clothes that you actually do wear.

2. Minimize Clutter. Again, not exactly a waste stream issue, but by reducing clutter you will save time cleaning and organizing.

3. Use Blankets instead of a Heater. If you live in a mild enough climate (this may not necessarily work for you if you have inches of snow on the ground!) pile up the blankets and leave the heater off. You'll save energy, which in turn reduces your electric or gas bill.

Home Office

1. Junk Mail. It's so easy to let papers just come into the house, and then what do you do with them? Hopefully you're able to toss them in the recycling, though there are those pesky ads that have some plastic coating on them preventing recycling. But wouldn't it be better to stop the junk from ever coming into the house? The Federal Trade Commission website shows you some ways to opt out of unwanted mailings (and phone calls!). DMA Choice also allows you to opt out of certain unwanted mailings.

2. Print Judiciously. It's very easy to get into the habit of printing out everything. But if you only print out the files that you truly need a hard copy of, you will reduce paper usage and reduce your need for storage.

3. Sell Old Books. If you have old books you aren't going to read again, sell them to your favorite used book store. One of my favorite used book stores will even pay you more if you take store credit rather than cash. Since I always find great art/architecture/theater reference books there, I'll happily trade old fiction for more long-term resources!

that top shelf has a nice hole in the sea of books - the former residents are in a box waiting to be sold, and read by someone new

Living Room

1. Reduce clutter. Once again, clutter reduction saves time and effort when it comes to cleaning.

2. Rent/Borrow vs Buy. This applies to movies, books, even video games. By renting movies and TV shows (from either a physical rental place, or Netflix) you have access to lots of media without having to purchase it. This can save you money, save space, and reduce the amount of packaging that enters the waste stream from producing all those DVDs. Borrowing from friends is also a great resource, and free!
Your local library is also an amazing resource. I haven't bought many new books in the last couple years (when I have, it's primarily been for school) as our public library is so extensive. Some people also borrow movies from the library; personally I haven't had the best of luck with this as DVDs are often scratched. However I have had excellent luck borrowing music and books on tape from the library.

3. Use those Blankets! Just like the bedroom, blankets can be used to keep warm instead of a heater. I enjoy curling up on the couch with a cozy throw blanket while reading or watching TV. If your heater can get noisy like ours, you want to avoid using it while watching TV anyway!

 you can see my pile of blankets on the stool above

Of course, if you have any other suggestions for reducing waste in any of these areas, please share in the comments!

Twin Accordion Lamps for Twin Desks

One of our projects before the start of this semester was to install new desk lights in the office. This was our setup:

Two desks side by side, flat file in between. We have one overhead lamp with a paper shade that gives some nice diffuse light, and we used to have an old floor lamp with multi colored shades. We gave the multi colored lamp to some friends when they moved since it really wasn't working for our space (too much glare on Sean's computer screen) and the colors didn't work in our space anyway but it was perfect for the kids' new room. Below is the multi colored floor lamp where it used to live next to my drafting table:

Those pink, green and purple shades are now much more at home in a shared girls room!

I had been eying some  accordion wall lamps like these for some time. It's more than I've ever spent on lighting, but they also look so nice! And after talking about it with Sean, we decided it was worthwhile to shell out the money for beautiful, functional desk lamps.

Here they are after installation:

(please excuse the poor light balance -- it was rainy so the room wasn't getting any natural light)

Here they are with more accurate light balance:

Close up of one of the lamps:

We love that they pull out from the wall and move so that we can get direct light anywhere on the desk. We can also angle them in such a way that we get indirect light when working at the computer -- no glare!

Now we just need to finish rehanging the art and diplomas...and I have another small office update coming for you next week. I'm finally making lots of great progress in this room!

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A Month of Small Fixes: Office Closet

First up in the "Month of Small Fixes" is a mini-makeover I did to the closet in our office at the end of summer.

Since we don't keep any clothes in the office closet, the part with two levels of hanging bars was not proving very useful. We had basically put the file cabinet in there, then shoved boxes and bags of stuff on top. It was a mess and didn't help us organize anything. Below is a picture of the closet how it was (with much of the junk moved out already, you can see some of it in the vanity area)

In order to make the closet work for us, I decided to install a shelf. I had 3' of space to work with, and luckily on my trip to Orchard that day, they had a wire shelf that was 3' long! Score! It's a bracket shelf rather than a standards system, which was incredibly easy for me to install by myself. Here's the shelf installed in the closet:

And here is how we have started organizing our stuff on the shelf:

The plastic bins on the right hold my model making supplies. The currently mis-matched bins hold other craft supplies (stickers, stamps, etc). The set of tiny drawers currently holds Sean's electronic components, but we're going to share those drawers so that model people and furniture have a safe and organized place to go. I'm hoping to borrow my parents' label maker soon so that we can truly get this shelf working for us!

We're also considering adding another shelf halfway between this one and the top hanging bar, so that we're not tempted to just stack things incredibly high. Maybe a project for Thanksgiving break?

Stay tuned for the rest of my "Month of Small Fixes"!