Craft Area/Office Progress

In what appears to be the never-ending task of cleaning up and reorganizing my crap area craft area/office, I am finally making some progress. The entire area was a mess and it was making me feel really uninspired. But, the amount of progress I made in one afternoon is making me want to use the space more, now if only I could find a little uninterrupted time to get crafty.

Here are my super messy before pictures:

This is the view of the entire area, this is my "mom cave" area of the basement. As you can tell, we do get really great light in our basement and I set-up shop right next to a couple of the windows. As you can also tell this is apparently a breeding ground for piles of miscellaneous crap craft supplies.

Under this mess here is a desk, that has drawers crammed full of office supplies and sewing supplies. (Notice the sewing machine hidden in this space? It's there...)

This is our old dining room table, turned painting and craft table. Yeah, this is basically where all my crafting supplies come to die, or be knocked off the table by the random ball that "nobody" was throwing around in the basement.

And this is the china cabinet that my mom's grandfather built for her. It just basically held stuff that I didn't know where else to put. In front of that is my pile of office organizing supplies that I couldn't fit anywhere else, so on the floor it went.

So now, let's take a look at some in-progress pictures:

I moved the china cabinet over by the desk in order to utilize it better for storage. The bottom shelf now holds the sewing machine and sewing supplies, and the top two hold office supplies. The desk is all cleared off and now I can sit down with there with the laptop, or set-up the sewing machine for a quick project. (That desk is begging for a makeover, I'm not sure what I am going to do yet, but it needs something.)

I love these little polka dot buckets I picked up in the dollar section at Target! They add a fun little touch to the space.

I have a slight obsession with post-it notes, I love having them in a little jars so I can see all the bright fun colors.

Another slight obsession I have; pens. I find a particular type I like and then get it in every color possible. And they can't be hidden in a desk drawer, they have to be out in the open for me to enjoy.

A cute little jar of washi tape, functional and decorative.

Here is the painting and craft table all cleaned up. It still needs some work, and I need to figure out how I want to organize my spray paints and paint samples. The kids also keep some of their art supplies down here and I need to make sure that I don't forget to give them some space here too.

See those two boxes under the craft table in the picture above? They hold my stash of jars that are just waiting to be put to good (re)use. I like to keep my paint brushes, art pencils, extra scrabble tiles, and whatever else will fit, in them and out in plain sight. I think it's nice to have supplies you use out in the open where they are easily accessible, and they can be decorative as well.

Last but not least, a few of my favorite inspirational magazines. All within easy reach and they add a nice little bit of color on those white shelves.

This space is sooo close to being finished, I can't wait to have it all finished. Do you have an area in your home that you just can't quite get completely organized as fast as you would like?