Sunday, January 10, 2010

January=Organization

There are a ton of blogs, websites, magazines, etc. out right now to show you how to get organized. Therefore, I am not going to go there. No need.

As you all know, I run an Etsy store. www.damaskdiva.etsy.com

It’s easy enough to manage it, thanks to Etsy, and thanks to PayPal. However, I got a few huge orders in December before my 2-week vacation. I told myself I would do them first thing on the first Monday of my vacation so I can knock it off my to-do list. Monday came and went. The next Monday came and went.

Slump.

Etsy slump.

I turned to my fellow KNET Members (Knotties and Nesties on Etsy Team), and many of them were in a funk, too. Was it too much cookies, Bailey’s or tamales? I don’t know, but I just was lazy. I forced myself out of it because I know that if I were a customer or client of someone on Etsy, I’d want my merchandise to be a priority and to get it soon. I owe it to my clients to do that, and I do try to get stuff out quickly.

Then I started thinking, WHY am I in this slump? And it hit me. My workspace was chaos. It was cute, but it was chaos. Yesterday I headed out to Dollar Tree and Wal-Mart to buy some stuff to help get myself together, and I just wanted to share with you what a few simple changes will do for your space and your mindset!

My bookshelf before (this was in July when I first redid my office):

Cute, but not a very good use of space. Finally, I reclaimed some of that space and now it looks like this:

(I know it’s blurry…sorry, not retaking it!)

I brought back up one of the shelves to hold books (since it’s a bookshelf and all), moved my nearly free file holder up, and finally found a home for my Dell inkjet on the bottom shelf:

I do have storage under the open shelves. Here’s what it used to look like:

Somewhat organized, but not really. Here’s what it looks like with the help of 4, $1 bins from Dollar Tree:

My stuff finally has a place!

1 other small thing I did was to place my paper cutters on the wall to free up some drawer space. I just used thumb tacks and put it on the wall. Nothing fancy.