home office organization - shallow cabinets

[Anonymous]

I need to get my home office better organized. I have built in cabinets along one wall, but they are too shallow depth and the immovable shelves too short in height to store books, binders or files in them in an organized way (I have been doing that, but they need to lie flat so I can’t tell what is what and wind up pulling everything out to look for a specific item). I want to move those items to a credenza so they can stand up and I can read the spines.

I do have office supplies in one of the built in cabinets, but these built ins run the length of a wall so once I move out all of my files and binders, there will be a lot of open space.

Any ideas what I can store in here? The space is about 11” deep, 11” high (it is two shelves, each affords that height) and 21” wide before you hit a barrier where the next built in door starts.

Thanks for brainstorms!

[Anonymous]

Why don't you just hire a carpenter to move the shelves for you?

[Anonymous]

It kind of depends on what you need to store, but I'm thinking some kind of bins. Maybe even bins that are attached to the doors like refrigerator door shelves.

I would sort through everything that you have, and in the first pass divide it into stuff that can't fit in the cabinets and stuff that could. Then go through the stuff that could fit and decide what you want to put there. The organizational scheme should be that you don't have to move anything to get anything else out, and that everything should be easy to find and get out. The tools available to you are partitioning the space -- horizontal and vertical dividers -- and aggregating things -- bins, boxes and sorters.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Why don't you just hire a carpenter to move the shelves for you?

Depending on how the cabinets were made the shelves may be structurally necessary.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Why don't you just hire a carpenter to move the shelves for you?

This is OP. Just returning to these replies - thanks for the ideas, esp to remove all, sort and think through what I need.

To reply to this idea, the problem isn’t the height of the shelves, it is the narrow depth - they are a few inches shy of being able to insert files/binder bookshelf-style to read the binder labels and be able to fit a lot and keep upright and organized. Unless I were to fully rip out the entire built in and have it rebuilt, no carpenter could change the depth.

[Anonymous]

Sounds like something like this would fit:

https://www.wayfair.ca/storage-organization/pdp/evelots-magazine-file-holder-organizer-full-4-w-white-with-labels-set6-ftlb1386.html

Or this: https://www.wayfair.ca/storage-organization/pdp/sterilite-desk-organizer-set-yeh1111.html?piid=

I have some odd sized cabinets and use these for storage. They come in different sizes.