Heaven for the organizationally inclined!

We are still in the process of getting things organized in our new apartment here in Germany. We unpacked all of our "bathroom stuff" and I got that organized and put away yesterday. My office/our guest bedroom is pretty much good to go as well. When the movers came, my husband told them to put all my books in the storage area in the basement which appalled me. What good are books if they are boxed up and far away from me?? Needless to say, as soon as I got the chance, I went down there with the laundry basket, dug through about 5 different boxes to find them all, and dragged them upstairs so I could put them away in the bookshelf in my new desk.

I was very disappointed to find this:

and this:

I guess in the grand scheme of shipping a household from OR to Germany, a few bent/ripped books is not the end of the world, but I was still a little sad. My poor books!

As I mentioned in a previous post, I was really excited to organize my new desk. I am realizing the extent of my affinity for obsessive organizing. I have a tendency to arrange clothes in the closets with like colors together and I want everything to be lined up just so. Weird, yet I know some of you are out there thinking "me too!" And in the case of my desk, I organized all my teaching books by topic such as teaching ELL students, reading, writing, research, multicultural education etc. It's my own personal library of bliss!

Desk as it looks when it's opened up

Close up of the books!

Where the blogging action happens!

I was also pretty happy with how much I could fit in the one drawer because I really don't like to have things out on the desk. I prefer if I can put them away in their own little space so the overall appearance is neat and tidy. My desk at school was always a disaster zone, so I try a lot harder with my home office.

Gotta have post its...lots and lots of post its!

Finally I found my files and organized them in my little bench. The top opens and there is space inside for hanging files. I keep files on various important subjects, so I can refer to good resources that I have collected over the years when needed. A lot of the contents are from when I did my master's in SPED, so I have info on many disability categories. That way I have good resources if I am working with a kid who falls into a certain category. This would be very helpful in the event I get hired for the SPED job, but I still have not heard about it. Maybe this week?

Then, when I am not using my desk, it closes up, so it looks neat which is great because the room itself is not very big.

I am still trying to attack the boxes containing the contents of our kitchen, which is really tough considering we don't have a kitchen installed here yet. There isn't really anywhere to put the stuff once we unwrap it, but we need to check and make sure nothing is broken and we also want to get the rest of the empty boxes that we unpacked after the movers left picked up because right now they are taking up 1/2 of our storage space. Once they get taken away, we can get more organized in the storage space which means getting the apartment visitor ready as well!