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.

Spring Cleaning/Chaos

Things have been a little chaotic over here lately. We've been dreaming of a new TV for years, and finally decided to take the plunge.

That sparked a whirlwind of change. Jeff actually came up with the majority of the decor ideas. Crazy, right? Even crazier -- he encouraged me to buy organizational things! I don't know what's gotten into him, but I love it!

By the time we're done, our office and living room will look completely different. Our living room is 90% done, and it already does. And I'm finding all sorts of new reasons not to leave the couch...

The big re-arrange sparked some major cleaning too. We've got a gi-normous pile of clothes waiting for thrift store donation. We took piles and piles of things down to the trash. Bulk garbage like our old computers, unnecessary CRAP like old papers and magazines. I also went through our storage cage and trashed a lot of things we didn't need to make room for the new TV's box, and some things that didn't really need to be in our apartment but we wanted to keep. I'm tired just thinking about all we've done since we decided impulsively to start this process.

I'm waiting to share until it's all done, which could take a few weeks since we ordered some things online and have to wait for them to make the trip across the ocean.

But I was too excited about the whole change not to share a sneak preview.

New TV, new surround sound, new woven baskets. Drastically altered entertainment center. And a really close crop because there's so much new going on to the left and to the right.

And that's it! No more until it's finished. We're down to the simpler tasks, like running clothes to the thrift store and a TV to its donation spot. Once our packages arrive, we've got some organizing to finish in the office and one more big purchase to buy and assemble.

We're having people over for St. Patrick's day, so I'm hoping we can have mostly everything done by then. In the meantime, I promised some of Jeff's co-workers some cookies and I've got some black bananas just asking to become bread. I think a baking session is the perfect way to spend this Sunday afternoon.

Taking Out The Trash

Well, more like taking out the clutter. It never fails to surprise and disgust me to see how much clutter accumulates in our office. It doesn't help that I'm obsessive about my hatred for clutter and my husband tends to collect things crap we don't need. Okay, sometimes he has really cool collections, like his movies and his steins from Germany. But the other stuff...

Ready for the befores? God, they're ugly.









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I have no explanation. Some of the wayward books and papers are a result of the massive and frequent earthquakes. But definitely not the whole room. And it had a semblance of order when we unpacked everything, I think. I don't know what happened, but somehow the room exploded.

I couldn't even walk in there without grimacing. Yuck.

So I stocked up on supplies:



Bouncy music and water. And got to cleaning.

I didn't take pictures of the whole process because I did one chunk in one day, then finished a week or two later. But the process went a little like this: Pile everything to one side of the room so I had some space to work with. Empty the bookshelves completely. Sort the books. (Jeff and I had a big disagreement about book organization, so to save constant bickering we divided our books. I organize mine alphabetically, aka normally, and he does...something else. I don't even know or understand, but his books have their own space now.) I also separated textbooks I don't care for, like Science and Math. Then piled all of my literature anthologies together, because I do care for those. And I'm known to flip through them now and then, so I like to keep them handy. I also separated my dad's books, which I've been meaning to mail back to him for about...a year. I should've done it when the distance, and price, was much cheaper in CA!



After I sorted, I threw them back up onto the bookshelves and out of the way. Then I started digging through the piles of junk. I separated all the military paperwork that was overtaking the piles and left them neatly in a box for my husband to go through and decide what's worth keeping. I never shred military stuff without his permission. But the rest of the stuff was free reign. So I shredded bills, credit card offers, and all the other useless junk we had laying around. I shredded so much I broke my shredder. Or jammed it trying to shove too much into it in my haste to clear the clutter. Either way, it's dead. I also threw out all the things we didn't care about. My theory: if we didn't use it in Lemoore and haven't unpacked it or missed it here---we don't need it. Period. Unless they're collectibles we have no place for (like my husband's chess sets), there's no need for extra stuff. Then I tried to organize the rest into like groupings and hid them away in bins, baskets, and crates. Military pins and patches, office supplies, thank you cards and other mail-related things, old pictures, etc. etc. It was a mess for a while there, but it's looking up now.

Would you like to see how much better it looks after a couple trips to the recycling and garbage bins?





Oh my goodness, I can breathe when I walk in this room now. Not that I need to walk in there too much. Besides grabbing a book or pen, this room has become Jeff's pseudo-man cave. I say pseudo because his dream man cave needs a lot more space and a lot more distance from me and my obsession with cleaning and clutter-eliminating. But since I don't need a desk or quiet space for my degree at the moment, I don't need an office. So it's his. Sort of, minus the books and girly stuff that will surely get sprinkled around.



It's amazing how much brighter the room looks when the eye isn't distracted by clutter. When I walk in, my eye immediately goes to the large window now. And this is the smallest amount of window space in a room! We lucked into some massive glass viewing space in this apartment, and I LOVE it. And I love that that gorgeous window can be appreciated now.



There are still some kinks to work out. The room is being threatened by chord chaos, but there's only so much we can do about that. With a desktop, external hard drive, router, and wireless router all trying to co-exist, it's a little challenging to hide the wires. We also have a desk chair in pieces. We go back and forth on whether to just put it together or to put it in our storage cage, but we have yet to do either. And my husband has that pile of papers to look through. But since I cleared a ton of space, I'm not in a rush.



I am wondering how long it will take us to stuff these bookshelves though. In Lemoore, we had one bookshelf jam-packed with books and files and who knows what else. We bought another shelf and assembled it once we unpacked here, but it's not looking so empty either. I'm just hoping we can last until we go back to the states and can buy another matching wire shelf from Wal*mart!


So that's our office, minus a few dozen pounds of clutter. So much better, right? Now if I can keep it that way. If not, Jeff just needs to keep the door closed at.all.times. I told him that was a must for his man cave. I've got command strips coming in the mail, so I may be adding a few touches to the walls here and there. I still love my wall collage in the living room, but the rest of the walls are looking pale in comparison...stay tuned!

Overflowing with Paper

It's been an eyesore since we moved in and unpacked.



We moved a ton of stuff to all their proper places, but we still had piles and piles in the office. What did we do?

Shove it all to one side of the room and ignore it.

We knew we needed to work on it but every time Jeff went in the office, he'd get sucked into his computer games. And I just didn't go in there. We've designated it his man cave since I no longer need an office for classes, so all that I have in there is files and books.

Every time I would clean the house, I'd move from room to room and clean from top to bottom. And every single time, I'd skip over the office. I have a routine: I start with the bedrooms and finish with the kitchen. One end of the house to the other. That path hasn't hit the office yet.

So today I finally started to tackle the mess.

What a mess! After PCS'ing, we had so many papers collected in random piles from carrying in our suitcases and haphazardly packed in boxes and crates. We had copies upon copies of orders, health records, approval forms and specific forms for overseas assignments, pet records, etc. etc. etc. etc. And of course, scattered in and all around were useless papers like old bills, receipts, and random things that should have been thrown out months ago.

And then there were all the books and records that had been organized at some point. The big earthquake knocked a lot of our books off their shelves (especially since I had thrown them up without bookends or anything really holding them in place) so I had to reorganize those piles.





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And as I was writing this post, my husband came home from work and tried to start organizing things his way. But my way isn't done yet, so he needs to stay out until it's all neat and organized! If you can't tell, we go about things in very different ways.


Anyways, I started the big office clean-up today and hope to finish it tomorrow. If I ever finish shredding all the useless paper we have laying around, and find places to put all the "stuff" we have laying around.

Lots of pictures to come!

Unpacked and In Need of Organizing...

Our apartment is finally starting to look like our home again. Almost every box is unpacked, and even better, everything fits! We lost lots of storage space when we moved from a townhome to an apartment. Luckily, we got rid of some bulky items, like the lawnmower, before we left CA. And some things, like our cats' stuff and extra chairs, fit into a small storage cage we get that's around the corner on our floor. We have just enough space on the balcony for our grill and table, but they're in pieces until the snow disappears for good. We still need to do some work to organize and make the most of what storage space we do have, but for now things are in a semblance of order and it's enough.

The living room is by far the most finished, since it's where we spend most of our time. The movies were the first things put away and organized. My dear husband has his priorities after all.



After we piled all the boxes then lugged them all down to the garbage area, we had a little nook of space in the dining area. I stuck a spare folding table there and it's turned into our little laptop charging station. I usually move my laptop to the kitchen table so I'm not facing a wall, and Jeff usually grabs his and takes it to the couch, but it's a handy space to stash them.



The setup of this room was actually pretty easy since there was only one way to situate our couch and entertainment center. That big empty wall will soon have some type of collage on it. I'm still working on what I want to put in all the black frames I have... I don't want it to be picture overload. I'm in no rush, although the bare walls are pretty boring.


The bathroom is done, because it's a bathroom and doesn't take much. We hung a curtain, some towels, and stocked up on toilet paper and were good to go. I have some artwork for in here, but it's actually the exact same shower curtain cut up into frames, so I don't think I want the same pattern all over the place. That's a little overkill.




The bedroom is pretty plain right now. We don't have much furniture for this room because all our clothes fit in the closet in CA, and they do here too. (Although just barely, and only when all the uniforms are in the spare bedroom's closet.) It was another easy room, since the bed could really only be put one way.



I'd love to get a nice big dresser to match our nightstands and make the room feel fuller, but without an overflowing closet, there's really no need. We have some plastic storage units and put our folded clothes in those, and hang the rest. It works out well that both of us prefer simple clothes, and don't buy many of them. Easier to move with!



This is another room where I have things in mind for the walls, but I'm not sure how I want to put things up yet.


The office is the only disorganized room left. It's the least used room right now. When we were in CA, I spent hours in the office working on papers and exams for my degree. We had a desk and bookshelf and all the little office supplies I wanted to have on hand to over-organize things. Now, I don't really need any of that. We set up the desk with Jeff's desktop, but he usually uses his laptop now that we bought new laptops for both of us recently. We bought another bookshelf before we moved, so we set those up and filled them immediately with all our books. I alphabetized and plopped them on the shelves, but they're not "pretty". Jeff and I also disputed over how to organize the books, so we intend to split the collection into "his" and "hers" so we can each organize how we prefer. The boxes are full of the office supplies and misc. items that we don't really need at the moment, so we haven't worried about.



Since Jeff intends to start taking some college courses soon, I suppose I should start organizing all those pencils, pens, calculators, and papers that are stacked in boxes. Not to mention, our book collection is almost as impressive as our movie collection (they're both forever growing, check back in a few years and we should be buried in our collections), so I want it to look as neat and impressive as our movies do. Our movies need work too, since they're overflowing from their bookshelves, but we can't agree on a solution and that's not the point right now...






So that's the house as is more recently. It's organized enough to feel like home again, but too plain for my liking. All these empty walls! Oh well, I'm sure things will change soon.

Not much else going on around here. It snowed pretty heavily the past few days, so we're staying close to base this weekend. The Japanese roads are treacherous in the snow, since they rarely plow and don't salt. At least on base the plows are running as soon as the snow hits! I've got plans to explore some more on base, and then we're meeting with some people from work to check out the "Misawa Idol". I've never been a fan of Idol, but I figure it'll be a few laughs and some good company.