Organizing Our Computer Area

This month's organizing round-up is a surface or shelf. Mine that I'm showing you in this post is a combination surface/shelf. It is what used to be our computer desk, and is now two computer desks with storage cubbies between them, from Ikea of course.

Here is the before picture that was taken sometime between Christmas and the middle of February. Yes, took me that long to get it down. Come to think of it, I see a big dinosaur that was a birthday gift in the middle of January for Caboose, so I know it was after that.

After we took the tree down we temporarily put up one of those plastic white folding tables to hold the second computer. I was a little indecisive about what I wanted, and they no longer made the desk like the one we already had. Plus the movers broke it and glued the legs back on that far side (you might be able to see particle board showing above the black metal strip at the bottom...it was completely broken off) so I didn't really know how long this one was actually going to hold up.

The night Hubby and I went to Ikea and measured the floor arrow, I wandered and stared at desks. The plan was to pick something. Wandering always gets my idea cells in my brain flowing. It doesn't happen very often. But I walked away with something totally unexpected that completely works for us.


This is on our second floor loft. Sometime I'll show you the rest of it, but I'm trying to stay focused here and not digress. It's challenging, but I'm determined.

The drawers are something extra that you can purchase to add in with this system (Expedit). I knew one set of drawers would be handy to hide a few things that would be necessary to have in this area.

Pencils, pens, scissors, tape, a couple of small notepads, small stapler, etc. The game box is there because I ran out of small cd cases that I move them all over to, so it's sitting in there for now.

I keep all the chargers we need to get to regularly in here, either electrical or the ones that hook up to the computer for cameras or ipods.

There are a couple of magazine files next to the drawers. One holds my current catalogs, and the other holds a couple of poly files. One of those files holds a bunch of odds & ends papers that would otherwise be scattered all over the desk area but that are notes or things that need to be kept for some reason or another, but not things that need to be filed. The other file holds recipes that I've printed off the computer that haven't made it into a menu plan yet...basically ones that I want to try soon.

The red cd boxes are from Ikea also. I posted about them and my favorite plastic bookends a little bit here. I still need to label all of them, but I thought I'd show you inside them, just so you could see how they are being used.

Kids' cd games. I have the Nancy Drew game cd's separated with a plastic bookend that you can't see. The newer ones come with two cd's that are necessary for game installation, but you only need the first cd to play the game, so I stick the second discs in the back.


School cd's, headphones for Rosetta Stone, my cd's (pictures, software, etc), and a few more game cd's.

My postage scale (usually my packing tape is in this box too, but it's downstairs ready to tape up a box), and an empty box!

One box has all the electronic/computer type cords that go to stuff, and the other box has video camera tapes, my old digital camera that will hold about 16 pictures, and some of our extra cords, because we don't need more than one out at a time.

Those wonderful brown woven baskets on top — one holds my extra printer paper, and the other holds items that need to be shredded. Of course I have a pile of papers and stuff over a foot tall piled up on top of the shredder right now, but we'll just pretend it's not there for the purpose of this post.

One of the woven baskets underneath is empty, and one holds files, primarily ones where I've torn out magazine ideas, but some are school files with catalogs or curriculum plans, and the green files are some that we have to keep from Hubby's military work travel for five years before we can shred them.

I put a couple of the plastic bookends in the back of the last file to hold them up since they don't take up the entire basket.

The blue lidded boxes hold files that we don't access frequently. Off the top of my head I can tell you that the red files are our taxes and my grandparents'/grandma's taxes, and the green files are Hubby's from the military.

The other blue box has a lot of medical records or school records that we need to keep. The brown accordion file doesn't have to be kept, but it has the insurance claims from the first 13-14 months of the girls' lives, and it's pretty astounding. I'm keeping it just for historical purposes.

I also used the plastic bookends at both ends of these boxes even though they were full. They are cardboard-type boxes, so the bookends helped to hold the files upright a little better and gave the boxes more stability.

I love how it looks.

You can check out what other people are organizing, or link up yourself, over at The Organizing Junkie.

You might also be interested in these posts:
The entire surface of my garage floor! — Garage: Before & After
Last month's round-up — Organizing the Master Bedroom Closet