Office Drawer Organizing DIY

Ready for a bit more organizing in 2015? Want to sneak a peak into my drawers?

Well today is the day for you. I have been on an organizing kick ever since Donna inspired  me to think about heaps of change.

I have a few projects in the works, but todays one is all finished and making me so very proud.

So get ready for my Heap of Change

In my first Heap of Change post I showed you how I created more storage space under the sloped roof of my attic landing. It has been working great.

Today we are moving into my craft room itself. My office nook to be precise.

In this old image it looks nice and neat. And on a good day it almost looks like this again.

(For a full reveal of my craft room go here).

One thing that has changed is that I moved that small drawer cabinet out into the landing into my drawer puzzle there. I replaced it with an Ikea Alex 6 drawer unit.

It looks quite nice when it is all closed up.

But when you opened it up, it was a mess….

I had just tossed everything and anything into those drawers, and I could never find a thing.

But now it is completely organized, looking nice and I can find everything and anything at a moments notice.

And it was even fun to do…..

My starting point was this inspiration post by Organizing Queen Extra-ordinaire Jen from I Heart Organizing. She shows us how to create drawer dividers made from cereal boxes and the likes. I rummaged through my kitchen drawers and gathered up boxes from left and right that might work.

I did a dry run until I had a good fit.

A silly design error from these Ikea drawers is that they don’t open up fully, so the back is harder to reach. I solved that by using a bigger box in the back (actually the bottom and top of an old IPad box).

In days galore I had a thing for pink. So I still had a lot of rolls of pink gift wrap. I used that to cover the boxes. It makes opening up the drawers so fun and cheerful.

Makes doing taxes almost fun…..

I organized the content by function (more or less). The top one is for my true office supplies.

There is a place for everything and everything is in its place….

I love that smaller boxes for paperclips etc cannot topple over because they are snuggled together in their own box.

The second drawer is for paper stuff.

All my little bags and labels have a place now. As well as both my label makers. I actually had so much space in this drawer that I wen’t through various other cabinets to hunt down little bags and labels to bring them all together. I could never do that before.

In the bottom drawer I have a small supply of tools, that come in handy from time to time when working on bigger crafts. So nice not to have to go down from the attic into the cellar to get a screw driver….

You can use Jen’s tutorial to see how to make the paper covered dividers.

I just want to add a few tips of my own:

Go for various sizes boxes, big small, narrow and wide, that way you will have a perfect fit for everything.

When cutting the boxes to size think about using them sideways too. And often you can use both ends.

Fill up every bit of space. For example I used a lightbulb box to fill up one open spot. It is very small, but turned out the perfect size for my label maker cartridges. When all the empty space is used up, the boxes will have no room to shift and move.

You can shorten boxes by cutting them in halves and sliding the halves into each other, that way you can fill up that last empty slot too.

Jen suggests using double sided tape to glue the paper down. But I found a glue stick to work much faster and much easier. It also is more forgiving for making adjustments.

When cutting your paper, cut it rather a bit too small. That will make fitting it inside so much easier.

Don’t fret and don’t be a perfectionist. These are inside drawer organizers that will be filled up. Any missed spots or creases are hardly noticeable when the boxes are in use.

And then go for it and you will have a before and after like this too:

So much storage and clean space created…..

… all from a bit of office drawer organizing……

Ah, I love a good bit of organization.

How about you?

Ready for more inspiration than check out the work of my other Heap of Change Coaches.

New winter mantel at Funky Junk Interiors

A Closet that now works at Beyond the Picket Fence

A (no longer) dirty secret at Knick of Time

And you can show us yours too! And we will come over and be inspired and share our favorite projects in Social Media Land.

Donna explained it all in her Heap of Change Challenge post, so if you are stumped for what to do go there and read all about it.

You can share your project (and remember it can be a whole room makeover or something as simple as an organized drawer) either with the Link up party below (that is running on all our blogs), or if you are not a blogger you can share it at our Facebook Pages too. Just leave me a message with the deeds on my page Songbird.

Show us yours!