Home Office Declutter

Most projects I read about or see are before, after and done. My office area often seems, like many areas in our home, a perpetual work in progress. We recently put in hardwood floors in DW's office, which provided the opportunity to unclog her chronically overloaded office and closet (yes, it's a nontraditional ranch house but mostly works for us). We were both really pleased with how her office looked and functioned afterwards.
Now that I couldn't get on her case about her office, imagine my consternation when looking at my space and realizing- Damn, that's cluttered. Perception is a funny thing- one thinks one can see, but it's often a funhouse mirror when looking at ourselves. I do find taking photos to be helpful with the vision thing.

In my own defense, I'll present what I started with. The house as purchased did have a dedicated office space. As a work area I wanted to keep it separate from other parts of the house.

It was also an alcove in a very large room (the good part) that needed a lot of work (the bad part). The alcove is behind the partition in the center of the photo.

Digital technology progressed in a Moore's way such that this room evolved into a great space for digital printing and for matting and framing photos. Thus I was back to my previous MO of requiring two desk areas (another story). Once married, I made room for DW's family heirlooms, one of them being a small secretary desk which I modified to fit where the original desk stood (I had removed it to make room for my desk) but kept the built-in bookshelf.  My need for storage expanded with digital printing. Thus along with wanting a standing work area for working on prints (vestige from chemical darkroom days) led to the standing desk area and the configuration shown above. Oh- and the wallwart heater and cord cover happened when we changed from baseboard electric heaters to heat pump. This location was the least obnoxious place for the heater- a necessary eyesore.

Of course to use the chemistry analogy of going over reaction hill to get to happy products valley, there was going to be some entropy and work involved in cleaning up this mess.

A new desktop and drawers made up for some of the storage area lost in simplifying the area, but making said items prolonged the task. The effort was worth it though as it cleaned up the area visually and provided the needed storage for the needed accoutrements for what the space was used for.

The final result (for now) a place for everything and everything in it's place. The wall-wart was minimized to the best of my ability

Here's the evolution from picture#3

PS- DW little desk from her GM dad's side was refinished, reassembled and has a new location in our spare bedroom.