Welcome home, gift wrap!

Our home is overloaded with gift bags, tissue paper, bows and wrapping paper since the wedding.  I did some research on the web and found some beautiful "gift wrap stations" which I would love to have.  However, I do not have the space for that in our cozy apartment.  We do have an enormous basement that is not pretty finished, but is perfect for storage.  So I took an existing shelf and turned it into our own gift wrap organizational center.  It didn't take much: a few nails, hangers, and lots of time sorting and folding tissue paper.

Here is where we started

Bags sorted by size and occasion

Pants hanger holding tissue paper

bows and ribbon

So there you have it.  It's not ideal, it's not gorgeous, but it is organized and handy.  We finally have a place for all of our gift wrap.

Dive right in

Well, here we go!  My first attempt to restore order to this post-wedding apartment was to tackle my desk.  My Our desk, which is housed in the guest room, brings me both joy and stress.  I love this desk!  I love the clean lines, the crisp white color and the handy cubbies on the side that provide extra organizational space.  But even more than the material qualities, I love what this desk represents to me.  This is the first piece of furniture I ever bought myself.  In college, and at the beginning of my teaching career, I worked at Pier 1 Imports and spent many months admiring this desk until I finally bit the bullet and bought it.  It is big and sturdy and makes me feel the same when I think back to that period of my life when I was finishing college and starting my career.

Now is where the stress comes in.  Because the desk is big, strong, and placed in the out-of-the-way guest room, it has become a "catch-all" for anything and everything we need to get out of the way but don't want to take the time to put away know where to put.  It all came to a head during wedding season and finally this last week I couldn't take it anymore.  I'm embarrassed to share this picture, but you need to see where it began to see how far it's come.

This desk deserves better!

So I started by removing everything from the desk, wiping it completely clean (except for the printer).  I took everything to the living room, grabbed some pretzels, turned on How I Met Your Mother (my current favorite show) and starting sorting.  I organized the mess into 4 piles: Stay on Desk, Find New Home, Give Away, and Throw Away.  I must say each pile was roughly the same size, which means there was A LOT of stuff that had no business being on that desk.  

In the "stay on desk" pile I was left with some minimal paperwork that needed storing, mini notepads and pens, printer paper, cards, cameras, checkbooks and a BEAUTIFUL ceramic piggy bank given to me by my dear friend.  

Next step was to buy some storage containers.  This is how my love and I spent our Friday night.  Dinner then shopping for organizational tools.  He loves me <3  I found some cute little tote boxes at the Dollar Tree and then some magazine holders and a document box at Wal-Mart.  After the weekend I got busy putting everything to work.  And here is what I've ended up with.

The USB cord to the printer needs to be accessible because our wireless printer doesn't always live up to its name.

So there it is.  I'll give it a couple of weeks to see if it stays like this.  If not, I may need to try a new organizational system.  I'm a firm believer in adjusting until you find what works for you.  But for now, there's a place for everything, and everything is in its place.