We had such a fun time this weekend organizing a home office upgrade for a mom who runs a direct sales business. This was such a huge transformation in exactly 4 hours.

Usually when a client calls for organizing help, they are dealing with some kind of transition in their life. This mom was lucky enough to win a day of organizing courtesy of Just Between Friends kids consignment. She was part of the spring Declutter Challenge. Lucky for her, she was actually in the middle of moving her office, so she really needed the help.

This little alcove seems like the perfect spot for a desk, but it needs just a few tweaks. Just a few.

What’s more, the rest of the business is in another room entirely. In a direct sales business like Arbonne, there is a fair amount of product, samples, and display materials to be stored.

Like many moms, there are also the kid and creative craft supplies to be managed.

We started the process with the same 5 steps- SPACE– that we use to organize any space. In order to make things go quickly, we have the trash bag and donate bag. We have the recycle and shred bins, and the magical Elsewhere bin, to help us sort and disperse those things that belong elsewhere in the house. This bin is magical because it keeps us in the space and focused on getting through the task. I know, you’ve never gotten distracted and wondered away from an organizing project, but we’ve seen it happen (wink, wink).

In this case, we both agreed at the start that we were not going to go through all the files and paper. Instead, we roughly sorted the paper into a box for home and a box for business paperwork. This will have to be sorted and organized on another day.

Ready to see the outcome of our hard work in just 4 hours???

There are several big wins in this project:

1. The business supplies are now all together in the office. How much easier is running this business going to be now that everything is all in one place?
2. The craft supplies are also here, on the bottom row of the storage unit. She already had all the cute bins.
3. We repurposed rickety storage cubes to create even more useful storage on the top of the cube units.
4. We assigned a job for each drawer in the desk. You can’t see the labels, but they are there.
5. We even set up a tickler file, to help this busy mama follow up on her beautiful clients. This could make the difference in whether she’s able to turn this into a full time income. We can make this much prettier in the future, but the key is to start using something other than the desktop and floor to organize her to-dos.

This doesn’t show up in the pictures, but we dealt with some of the clutter by downloading 3 apps that every mom needs.

We pulled out a large bag full of goodies that are headed to the next Just Between Friends consignment sale. She’s loving that income so much that she’s set up another area of the home to sort and stage items to consign for the fall. There’s no room here in the office

We were working at a fast and furious pace, since this hard working girl had a plane to catch just 2 hours after we finished that day. This girl was MOTIVATED! But she did promise me that she’s bring a desk chair in on Monday and start using her home office for work instead of using it to catch clutter.

Yes, there’s more that we’ll do to label, finesse and prettify the room. But even so, I want to move in and enjoy the fireplace and skylight myself!

These pictures are killing me, as I know they could be so much better, but I had to let this gal catch her plane!

But she was kind enough to give you a quick tour:

Thanks again to Just Between Friends Philly for their generous prize for this hard working mom. Be sure to catch their fall sales. You can sell, shop, save, and declutter all in one great weekend. Fall 2016 dates are:

@JBFReading Sept 8-10

@JBFPhilly Sept 22-25

@JBFLancaster Oct. 6-8

What do you think of this organized home office for mom? Could use use a 1-day transformation like this?