I was in terrible need of an office, so without further ado, here is my Ikea Office Before and After.
Apartment living has been interesting for the past three years. I went from doing things one way, to having to adapt to doing them differently due to space. I have a natural need for organization and space but in an apartment, it’s a real challenge. Doug is a bit of a neat freak, and for someone who works from home, owns their own business and lives in an apartment, it’s a challenge for me to feed his need for being neat. It makes me feel bad a lot, but I honestly know there is nothing we can do about it as long as we live in a such a small space.
However, some of that has changed a little now.
Since we are in a small apartment, we have this little area that is considered a dining area. We don’t use it for that at all. It became a work space. We had a table with printers on it, a bookshelf that literally became a surface for almost anything we couldn’t decide where to put, a file cabinet and our dog’s kennel, which the top of became a place to store large containers. No. It was not working, it was terribly cluttered and it made me a little crazy. At our previous apartment we had the same style room but we had a long table there that sort of “worked” as a work surface but we didn’t retrieve the table out of storage when we moved this past summer so – this is just kinda how it all got set up.
Here is the space BEFORE we moved into the apartment.
I recently accepted a new position that allows me to continue to work from home. This job definitely needs organization and hanging out on my couch to work is comfy some of the time, but when the more time consuming projects come up, I needed a work surface.
That’s where IKEA came in. I loooooooove Ikea. Hands down, my favorite store. I needed an Ikea Office. Plain and Simple.
The photo on the left is as we were starting to move stuff out of the area. I forgot to take a “real” before photo, but this is pretty close. It was literally just a place to store junk. We took three bags to the trash, donated two huge boxes and packed up about two containers worth of stuff. Also, the bookshelf went to storage, along with the teacart which you can barely see to the left in the photo with the printer on it.
My Ikea Office – The photo on the right is about two hours after we set up the desks and I was slowly deciding where to put everything. Even today, several days later, this area is not complete. Since that photo was taken we moved the dog crate into a corner where it is out of the way. That space is all open now and another chair can go there eventually. That desk has a hutch on it now. We were exhausted and tired of assembling things so it waited until the next day. I will keep you updated as I figure out where I am putting everything. For storage purposes, I used what we already had in the space until I find some new things to organize with. I feel a Container Store trip coming on soon. Or maybe just Target Dollar Spot. Who knows.
This is the piece that started it all.
Do you have suggestions on how I can store stuff? How I can make my Ikea Office better? I am a crafter but I also have a job that requires me to be at the computer for long hours. So I need craft storage, but have to use at least one square of that side shelf for notebooks and binders for work.
Any tips or suggestions are VERY welcome!
