a girl needs her space.

I don’t know about you, but I am a “station” girl. If I have a project or any task that needs accomplishing, I have to get out all of my tools, find a flat surface, and create my station. Since Mr. Spouse and I have been married, my station has been our dining room table. Awesome for a workspace, but terrible for, oh you know, eating. First apartments do not lend themselves to “stations” very well – it’s all about cramming everything we’ve both ever owned / stolen from our parents into an infinitesimal space.
Since I was stuck with the dining room table, I found myself daily laying out all of my work and project stuff on the dining room table then hurriedly clearing it away to share a meal with Mr. Spouse. Not ideal. We tried turning our guest room walk-in closet into an office area and workspace, but quickly realized we needed the added storage.
Ultimately, I decided that I did most of my work on the computer, so if I could just find an area for my computer, mail “catch-all”, etc. I could function. But where to put the computer? Sadly, for over 8 months, my computer sat here:

That’s right – poor Mr. MacBook sat underneath a chair. Are we seeing the problem? So, I gazed around the abode and set my sights on these:

          

We have some really fantastic built-in shelves, but unfortunately, all of the shelves were full of:

         

DVD madness. All of our DVD’s were taking up every single shelf. I could take the madness no more! That’s when I saw this post over at I Heart Organizing and knew that my solution was here! If I could just condense our DVD’s onto one shelf, I could have 4 fabulous shelves to play with! So I ordered these incredible DVD sleeves from Amazon, and got to work! And guess what – all of those DVD’s now fit perfectly here (Alphabetical dividers are still to come…):

      

In ONE SINGLE BASKET! Hallelujah! The sleeves allow you to place both the DVD cover and 2 discs in one sleeve:

    

So now that our DVD’s were no longer eating up such fabulous shelves, I could get to work decorating and create me a small, but necessary, computer space. Here’s where we came out:

      

The bottom two shelves now house my computer, our mail “catch-all” basket, and my favorite books, pens, etc.
      
The next shelf holds our DVD picnic basket, which left me 2 shelves to decorate at my leisure – books, our dads’ license plates, wedding photos, and more!

I love love love the space! I know that my computer shelf is tiny, but at least it has a place to call home besides under a chair. I love feeling like all of my “stuff” is easily accessible (pens, scissors, tape, chargers, etc.) and ready to use. It helps to know that everything now has a home that is still tucked away and not intrusive.
What do we think? Are you a station person? Where do you like to do your work?