The Office is Stacked

When we moved here, we made the office/2nd bedroom into a pseudo-man cave for Jeff. He had his desktop and it was his room to escape into. I didn't mind the clutter if I could shut the door.





So it's gotten very little love. Jeff doesn't want me in there organizing too often and I didn't put too much work into it besides getting things put in somewhat of an order and alphabetizing my books.

If you're trying to picture the layout, these bookshelves are to the right of the picture above. As they were, the bookshelves were directly behind the desk.

As you can see, we were running out of room. So I started cleaning and purging. I made room in the bedroom closet for some files and the safe, since they could really go anywhere. I moved a bunch of books into the bedroom on a small bookshelf in there. We both majorly purged our clothes and books. But the closet was still a disaster. We had all this stuff and no where to put it. Jeff actually wanted to BUY shelves and bins to organize. It was an exciting day for me. So we started the big move around. We started in the living room and got it mostly into place before we started the office.

The furniture in this room is pretty straightforward. We had moved the desk a few weeks ago because Jeff preferred it in front of the window. I didn't have an opinion, since I only sit down to print things off maybe once a month. You've already seen that the bookshelves were moved into the living room.

We decided to put all the movies into the office. It was making the living room feel so small and cluttered with so many titles. We also finally found a DVD shelf that would work for our movie collection. It's pretty large scale, obviously. I had been browsing online for months and we had been scouring the few stores here for months with little to no progress. We wanted something taller that would fit a good chunk of movies but not take u pa huge chunk of space. And strong enough to hold that much weight.

I had stumbled across this media rack on Amazon months ago. I read all the reviews, bookmarked it, talked it over with Jeff, and wondering if it would ship APO. Because of the price, we waited. We looked for other options. Just one wouldn't do it, remember. We calculated we'd need at least three to cover our current collection and have room to grow for at least our stay in Japan. That's a big chunk of change.

Well, after months of piling movies higher and higher in the living room, we made the plunge. Very nervously.

I'm so glad we did.

The shelves are very similar to our bookshelves. Metal shelves and poles. Very sturdy. It's TALL. I can just barely pull movies off the top shelf (we even had to check before we put them up there.) It came with a wall strap since it's such a narrow shelf with quite a lot of weight to it. And with earthquakes, we weren't pushing our luck. It's securely attached to the wall and not going anywhere. As you can tell, it holds a good chunk of movies, much more than our older shelves. We bought just one at first to make sure it was worth it. We filled it up and I bought two more shelves that very night.

I'm hoping they'll be waiting in our mailbox when we go check mail in a few...

Our biggest project was the closet. I wish I'd taken before pictures. It was a mess. We emptied the closets and made piles. We threw a ton of things out that we had been holding onto for no good reason. We bought some shelving and some clear bins to better organize the things we did want to keep.

Now Jeff's miscellaneous project pieces are contained in clear bins. My craft stuff is disorganized in another closet for another day, if you're curious.

We left enough hanging space to hang Jeff's uniforms, especially the dress blues and whites that might get worn once while he's here. Maybe. And some shelves for all his random uniform essentials, like ties and boot straps and covers.

I made some space for his PT clothes, uniform shirts, and uniform extras too. We don't have space for them in the bedroom, and this way everything stays together. Those gray bins hold extra magazines, books, and random other things.

Ah, organized. We also made space for a possible future futon. We were going to purchase one, then the furniture store went out of stock. We're possibly buying one from a friend or possibly waiting for the furniture store. We'll see.

But it's nice to have that space better organized! It's been two weeks of working and piling things in the apartment like normal, and the room hasn't gotten totally trashed yet. Progress.

And when we get our other shelves and fill them up with movies, that will look even better. And Jeff will really have an entire wall of movies. Insane.