Beautiful Family Office Supplies: In the office; supplies can be pretty and useful.

My husband regained his office this last month. He lost his office 5.5 years earlier when it became clear our daughter’s ears were far too dainty to sleep with her baby brother nearby. Any noise the baby made would cause 2 year old Maddie to yell out…..”It’s being LOUD!!!!!” ‘It’ would be her little brother who she took her time bonding with. I tease about Madison’s inability to sleep near him but I certainly wasn’t co-sleeping with the baby….he was really loud.

So Logan’s office became Max’s room and 8 o’clock bedtime was restored and the world was returned to order. Except that my refrigerator, the top of my microwave and a corner of our bedroom became cluttered with all the paperwork it takes to run a family and a thriving freelance business. Until a month ago when we tossed 1/4 of all our stuff into a portable storage unit to prepare our house for sale. My daughter is now complaining that “It’s being LOUD!!!!” But we’re ignoring her cries and they’re sharing a room until there’s a ‘Sold’ sign in our yard.

This means we have an office and I’ve been having the best time organizing all our paperwork off the fridge and the top of the microwave and out of our bedroom. This means I’ve been obsessed with things to make an office more pleasant and organized. So guess what? I’m sharing what I’ve run across with you.

We’re currently using a piece of craft foam as a mouse pad and before that we had a very nice one from a local realtor with the last name Safar. His tagline is “Safar, Sa Good!” which made me feel a little sad everytime I read it…..and so we got the piece of craft foam which is depressing in it’s own way but has no tagline. Galison offers this clever mousepad slash notepad (no longer available, but we found this one)  I’d be happy to put in our nice organized office.

When I cleared my microwave and refrigerator of all our paperwork, I needed somewhere to put it all. I found this pretty file tote and have created very specific files for each piece of paperwork that comes through my house. No ‘Misc’ labelling is allowed (unlike my budget recording where Misc. is killing us each month). We have a regular filing cabinet but it’s easy to lose track of that stuff, the file tote is like a tickler file, and it’s so lovely to look at I don’t mind leaving it out for the world to see. Unlike our filing cabinet which is covered with a plethora of really annoying stickers.

This one isn’t really for the office but my girlfriend has been using this to organize her money and I love organization. Organizing makes me feel a little high. I am also cheap, so tracking my money? Orgasmic. Andrea allocates cash for several different categories and places the cash in a corresponding file of her notepad/accordion folder (no longer available). Grocery money, entertainment, haircuts and so on all have their own folder. When she spends cash out of the folder she writes it down on the notepad to make sure she knows where every cent went. I know, I can’t imagine it either….no more debit card? Is that even legal? It’s worth thinking about though because there is something about the concrete nature of spending actual cash that helps you stay on track budget wise.

A few weeks ago Isabel emailed me these amazing containers (no longer available) from the MacBeth Collection, I wrote her back the next day that I’d had a dream, a very lame dream, about these containers and all the things I could store in them. The remote controls in my living room, the cosmetics in my bathroom and a catch all in the office. I’m picturing pens and a note pad in a small tray. I must have ten of these. Now.

Another great ‘catch all’ for the desk is this vintage wire basket. You have to be careful though with a basket like this because pretty soon it’s full of empty envelopes and your power is turned off because the electricity bill is in the bottom of the basket. But if you use it to store your paperwork which must be dealt with in the next 7 days you should be safe.

All home offices need rubberbands and paper clips. But let’s not be boring, even free newspapers come with regular rubber bands around them. Let’s jazz things up with these animal rubber bands. Not only are these rubber bands fun to look at they’re also ‘green’ because the designer wanted to create products which are normally disposable and make them into things people want to keep therefore reducing waste.

Iconoclasps are another way to go, easily recognized hand signs to keep your pages together is a pretty novel idea. If you could use the correct sign for each paper you’re clasping even better. Too bad there isn’t a middle finger.

I love speech bubbles, they’re so ripe for comedy. Make them into paperclips and these are pretty nice office supplies. I picture receipts clipped together with ‘Explain me’ written in the bubble. Or maybe a set of bills telling you to “Pay Me”. It’s a stretch I know but I hate paying bills and if I could approach it with laughter? Great.

My sister in law (the one I like) sent me this a few weeks ago with the subject line, “I think this will help Maddie and Max with all the difficult decisions they face.” I’m including it here, even thought it’s more of a school supply (since it’s a folder) because I think we can all benefit by asking “What Would Bacon Do” before we make important decisions. In fact I’m going to keep one of these in the office and another in my nightstand. The only thing I can’t figure out is how bacon does anything but taste really good. That’s got to be a full time job. (Unfortunately we could no longer find it available for purchase).