{Day 11: Prettier Paper Organization}

The lovely little space for today is the area between our kitchen & dining room (a word was never more loosely spoken as "Dining Room" for this space, but whatever...). Anyway, it is our de facto home office, the place where we go to get a pencil but also where we get dog treats, charge our phones, and collect dishes to set the table. And it has a tendency to get messy since it is so small and yet so busy. In fact, I once titled a photo of it "eyesore". 

 

As I was out shopping yesterday for photo frames for another lovely little transformation, I stumbled upon a solution for the paper mess.    

This craft station is 40% off at Michael's this week. It has a deep section in the way back, which is where I put our phone books and directories. Just the tops of the books show.  The middle section is about half as deep and wide enough for a file folder. In this section, besides files I need on a regular basis, I also put the kids' important school papers (things that need to get returned to school). The three cubbies in the front are holding small notebooks and some happy little chore incentives that I printed up for the kids. The last cubby is empty. I could have moved the pens & pencils to this spot, but everyone is accustomed to them being elsewhere, so I left it empty -- for now. The bottom drawer is pretty shallow so I put a few coupons in there.

This is what the area looks like now. I think it will function much better, and I am glad that I went back today to buy the craft station to corral all of our paper. However, I still don't feel like it's really done. It doesn't look all that pretty, which is my aim with the "lovely little spaces" series. So we'll see...

Here are some close-ups on a few of the other details in this area.

This dish is where I put my cell phone, not only to charge it, but any time I am at home. It's nice to have a designated spot. 
 

And a small ramekin full of miniature dog biscuits make it easy to give my old pup a treat!