Clean Office Project

Today was the day to re-arrange and clean my office. Since Mark bought me a brand spankin’ new vacuum cleaner the other day, I thought I would see if I could break it by vacuuming up copious amounts of dog hair out of my office carpet (the carpet is eventually going to be replaced with laminate, but until then - we torture vacuums).

The biggest issue I had been facing with my office now occupying the extra main-floor bedroom, was the addition of the six dog crates into the room. My dogs spend their day with me, as I work - and that was a great setup, when I had my office in its original location downstairs. Then we decided to dog-proof that room and create a ‘dog room’ with a dog door and access to their fenced outside potty area. So the dogs got my office for their bedroom, and my office moved to the downstairs family room. The dogs could still spend the day with me, and be close to their outdoor access. This worked well, until I realized how much time I had to spend running upstairs to switch laundry, cook, tend to children, etc… and so I decided to take the ‘guest room’ and convert that into my new office. I like the new location, but I have less square footage than either of my previous two office locations. To say it was cramped, would be an understatement. Oh, and did I mention, this office also serves as my sewing/craft room. Yeah - it’s a multi-tasking room and it was a mess.

I’ll will spare you any before pictures. It was too horrid to share; but here are the after photos.

This first photo shows my computer desk, stacked drawers and the folding table I added to hold the homeschooling materials.

A better view of the homeschooling center, and that white cabinet to the left, is my sewing & serger machine cabinet.

And finally, a view of the newly stacked dog crates. I did not have them stacked before, so you can imagine the floor space they took. Why the dog crates, you may ask… well, I have one 5 month old puppy and another that turned 1 year old today (Happy Birthday Henry!), and they are not reliably housebroken. Also, I have gotten four new dogs since Christmas 2007, so they have not yet proven themselves to all be 100% trustworthy in the housebreaking department: so we have scheduled potty times, play times and then crate times to avoid accidents in the house. If I can’t watch them 100% at that moment, then I crate them. This also avoids puppies chewing on furniture, power cords, etc…. So it’s an all-around training method that works well. In case you were wondering: the dogs do not spend their entire day and night crated! They get at least 2 hours every day outside running and playing, in addition to supervised time roaming around the house and laying on my lap, at my feet, on the couch, in my office chair, etc… At night, the office becomes the dogs’ bedroom. It works for us. The stacking (and yes, they are tethered/anchored together to avoid the top one from falling off), freed up some floor space - which I desperately needed.

Next phase of the home office project will be painting the walls, installing new laminate flooring and overhead storage cabinets, and cleaning out and organizing the large closet in this room and installing an organizer system. It will definitely be a large project, but will be awesome when it’s finished.

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Written by Traci Knoppe ©: Aside from her roles as wife, mother of six, mother-in-law and grandmother, Traci is a Christian parenting instructor, Sunday school teacher, and business owner.