The KonMari Way to Create Functional Office Space in a Small Bedroom

When we downsized our house, I knew it was going to take some creativity to fit our family of 5 into a space that was nearly 2,000 square feet smaller. See our full story here. Being a recovering shopaholic one of my biggest problem areas has always been my closet. Imagine how much bigger of a problem my wardrobe became after we had a smaller closet and I started using our bedroom as an office as well! Thankfully the Konmari method saved me big time and helped me transform my wardrobe.

*This post may contain affiliate links. For more information, see my disclosures. 

My Wardrobe Before Konmari

I had originally heard about the Konmari method from blogger Abby Lawson from Just a Girl and Her Blog. See all her Konmari posts.

When we moved into a smaller house, it meant we had to big time downsize our closet too (even though we still have a walk in.) I knew I had to find a way to maximize our space in a smaller house and that my closet might be the best way to go.

As you can see, I already started decluttering and got a pile together to donate. KonMari would say these items just didn’t bring me joy. I didn’t take the time to thank them like she recommends but it definitely felt good to get rid of clothing items that were no longer serving me.

Before

“Office” clutter

Because downsizing our house meant I also lost my office space, I had been trying to also make room for all of my important papers, schedules and other office goodies like pens and staplers.

If you are overwhelmed with clutter, including paper clutter, I highly recommend this FREE 7 Simple Starting Points Guide to tackle clutter.

It’s so difficult trying to make office stuff functional in a small bedroom.

You can see homeschool paperwork, printer paper, my Blogging Binder, pens, CDs, angel cards. You name it.

Stashing everything in this drawer definitely kept my room looking nice and clean, but every time I opened this drawer, I immediately wanted to shut it. There was no organization whatsoever.

The dresser drawers

My sock and underwear drawers were not much better. I’ll spare you the photos of my “keepsakes” but I think this photo of my sock drawer will give you a gist of the kind of state it was in.

There was no real organization to these drawers at all and I definitely wanted to do something to make better use of this space.

Other great organization posts:

• 10 Declutter Moves You Can Make in 10 Minutes or Less
• 18 Practical Ways to Downsize and Simplify This Year
• 25 Ways to Completely Declutter Your Mind, Body and Home

After the Konmari Folding Method

I started by taking everything out of my “office” drawer and un-hanging all of my hoodies and sweatshirts from my closet.

By using the Konmari folding method, I was able to get all of my sweatshirts and my flannels into my old office drawer which freed up a ton of space in my closet.

There are multiple ways that I’ve seen to correctly fold the Konmari way. Amanda with True Good and Beautiful had probably one of the best and easiest tutorials I’ve seen so you can get an idea of how to get yourself started folding. How to do the Konmari folding method.

I couldn’t believe just how easy it was to fit my bulky, oversized sweatshirts into one drawer! Plus they were all still extremely easily accessible and a breeze to find in a hurry. Check it out…

In fact, I was loving this insane space saver so much, I decided to give the same Konmari folding method a try on my bottom drawer.

My bottom drawer that originally stashed all my sleep sets, workout pants and sweatpants was totally transformed. I didn’t remove anything and yet, I found myself with tons of excess space.

To help keep things separated, I grabbed one of my extra storage bins and used that in between my workout pants and sweatpants to store my delicate sleep sets. Look how great it turned out!

I took a few extra bins I had around the house to help tidy up my underwear and sock drawers as well. Like before, I will spare you the underwear details, but check out what my top drawer looks like now.

After clearing out a ton of extra space in my closet, I put all my summer dresses and tank tops to the back, where they won’t be needed. Another great way to do this would be to create a capsule wardrobe.

Now I had freed up so much closet space, I was able to flip the shelving I had previously used for my shoes in order to have extra, out of the way storage for all my office supplies.

To finish everything up I took my jeans off the shelf and hanged them up, placed my shoes on the shelving and then used the remaining space to store books, paper, printers and pens.

All those things that used to be shoved in a drawer or stuck in the corner are now nicely tucked away in our closet and organized for easy access.

I can’t believe how much of a difference the Konmari folding method made as far as freeing up space for me to utilize. Check out these before and afters!

Before and After Konmari Method

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