An Office Cabinet in the Dining Room

While both Mike and I made our peace with moving our office to the basement, we both knew that having everything office related down there wouldn’t work for us. We needed a place to sort mail, pay bills, keep important documents close by, and also have essential office supplies on-hand. We even decided we wanted to keep the printer close by (the wireless signal didn’t work as well in the basement).

I emptied the whole top portion of the white dining room cabinet. We moved the microwave to the kitchen counter in the corner - there was a lot of wasted space there so we didn’t lose as much counter space as we originally feared. It’s not ideal - we do have less room for food prep, washing dishes, etc…. but this was the easiest solution for now. At some point we still want to move the cabinets up and do an over the stove mounted microwave, but it’s a big job and we don’t want to bite off more than we can chew when the clock is ticking. More important to get the rest of the house and ourselves adjusted to baby’s impending arrival first. Plus when we first made the decision to put the microwave in the dining room, we didn’t have the kitchen island, which has made a HUGE difference for us in food prep and counter space.

I already really like having the cabinet set up this way. Instead of working at my desk in the office on projects I now just set up at the dining room table and use the cabinet for all the supplies. I have a ton of work to do organizing the basement, but we’ll get there. In the meantime this works really well for our day-to-day office replacement.

The rest of the cabinet is still kitchen storage - baking dishes, trays, glass jars, extra mugs, etc. I had to let a few things I rarely use go, put other things in the basement and move a few other things to the kitchen. Somehow it all balanced out (though I need to go through my kitchen basement storage tubs next and decide what I should keep and let go of down there next....).