Before and After: Work Edition

When I started my current job back in April, 2008 I inherited a VERY messy office.  People who know me know that I can be pretty anal about certain things (although I've learned to relax a bit since being married and having a baby) and the office was not conducive to getting any real work done.  At least not for me.  For the woman who came before me, I guess it worked for her.

I took some "before" photos and then neglected to take any "after" photos for almost 3 years.  Well, I'm staying late at work today to meet some friends for a drink at 5 (I normally work until 2) so decided to use my awesome camera phone to get some photos.

I share my office with my boss, a retired professor.  He's only here for half an hour or so each day though as he has his own office in the main campus library and so he doesn't keep things here.  He pretty much stops in, has me type up some letters for him, and then is on his way.  It's a pretty big space though and was filled to the BRIM with stuff when I started - catering menus from the 1980's, floppy disks, computer manuals for Windows 96, etc.  The woman I replaced was here for 20+ years.

I know you're all very excited about this, so I won't keep you in suspense any longer:

This long filing cabinet with bookshelves above is immediately to your right when you come in.  Before, it looked like this:

And now it looks like this:



The Professor's table before:



And now:



The floor between the table and the filing cabinet before:



And now:



The shelves above my desk before:



And now:



The bookshelves before:



And now (thanks to my bro Spence who helped me alphabetize all the books when he was visiting me a few years ago!):



My desk before:



And now:



The area between the door and my desk before:



And now:

Here's how the whole room looks from the doorway now:

Pretty drastic, huh?  The longest 6 weeks of my life?  Not the first 6 weeks I lived in Boston without a job, taking any crappy temp job that came along.  Not the last 6 weeks of my pregnancy.  It was the 6 weeks that I shared this office with the woman I was replacing and couldn't clean or organize as I didn't want to offend her.  Now it's all mine, clean desks, organized filing cabinets, alphabetized books and all!