I don’t know what your living situation is, but I live in a very small apartment with my boyfriend Carter. Don’t get me wrong, I love our apartment, but accomplishing anything for work or school is stressful when sharing one desk in a tiny nook in the wall. On top of everything, our desk looks like this:

BEFORE: Total chaos… We even have another computer that is supposed to sit on the desk, but as you can see, there’s no room for it here.

I’m embarrassed when we have guests over because our desk is always the messiest part of our apartment (and it’s one of the first things you see when you walk in). We installed shelves for a little organization, but as you can see, it still looks like a bomb went off over there. 

This morning, I sat down to do some work for Intel and my boyfriend sat down to do his homework. We took one look at each other and I could tell we were both thinking the same thing: “We need to organize this darn desk.”

So, we looked at all the stuff we had on and inside our desk to come up with some ideas about what we needed to do to organize it. The biggest organizational problem, we noted, was the piles upon piles of unopened and opened mail strewn everywhere. On top of the mail, we both had bank statements, earnings statements, school work and all sorts of other randomness taking over.

Against my boyfriends better judgment (so he said), he decided to let me make our shelves into my “do-it-yourself” project for the day. I got my inspiration for them from Martha Stewart’s website. I’m not usually very crafty, but I think I did a good job on this project. Our desk is now organized and astatically pleasing. Don’t you think?

AFTER: Finally, an organized desk! I bought a filing cabinet from Storables (bottom left) where we put our copies of our paid bills, bank statements, and school papers. This freed up room on the desk surface for our three computers.

On the shelves, I secured empty paint cans with Velcro, and used them for storage. One for my mail, one is for Carters’ mail, one for bills, one is for blank cards and stamps, one for cords, one for receipts, etc. They’re all labeled. In between the paint cans, we scattered a random mix of pictures, trinkets and useful organizational tools like my Rolodex.

To recreate our super cool shelf organization, all you need is:

• 2 wall shelves
• 7 empty paint cans (can be purchased at any paint store)
• 3 feet of Velcro strips

All I can say is that I feel like a huge weight has been lifted off my shoulders, now that I’ve organized our desk.  Now I don’t have to go to Starbucks every time I want to get some work done because I finally have space to do it at home.