I find myself clicking “a fave” every time I see a great work space on Flickr; somehow no matter how hard I try, I cannot get mine to look as nice as the likes of this desk area, from flickr member and blogger The Style Observatory. Love the nautical charts, love the inspiration board, the flowers and the thought of plugging in my laptop in this spot. How’s your workspace? Share it with us in our Fresh New Spaces group.

Since our Co-Founder Drew has been all over the interwebs this week, I thought it was a good time to show his office organization tip. Take it away Drew!

As you well know by now, I am always trolling the web for inspiring work spaces. I am very jealous of this one, by Designs by Shoshana. It’s so clean and organized that you don’t even notice that monolith of a printer! Did you even notice that the wall files are, well, on the wall, or that they are files? They seem to fit right into the composition of artwork. The white holder and simple manila folders help it blend right in as well? I have to say my favorite part of this room is that gorgeous inspiration board. It appears to be a frame full of glass cloth, with foam core or cork behind it.

image via houzz.com

Today’s Flickr faves come to us from J.E.N., who submitted them to our Fresh New Spaces Group. I think I would actually get stuff done in this space, unlike my current office, where the In-box is too full and is thus distracting:

I was cruising around on tumblr yesterday (it had been awhile) and I found this gorgeous office in my favorites. I am not sure where credit is due, but it seems the first person to blog it was gigimelo. NEW NOTE: Thank you to Victoria, who knew exactly whose office this is! It is where the creative magic of Tif Fussell happens. Check out Tif’s work at dottie angel. Buy it on Etsy!

So, Organization Point #1: A Gorgeous & Neat Work Environment. This is a beautifully organized workspace. I am not quite sure what’s going on in that bottom shelf on the right, but I like that there is one little messy element. That magazine file on the desktop can hide a multitude of sins and serve as an inbox without messing things up. I can’t quite tell what is in the Catherine Holm casserole dish, but it sure looks neat and organized. I would not have thought to use a casserole dish that way. I’m sure it would get a lot more use on my desk than in my kitchen. The drawers in the vintage desk provide plenty of space for everything to be tucked away. Also, check out how organized the art arrangement is. With everything lined up neatly like this in a similar color palette, you could hang pages from a lovely glossy and it would look fantastic!

Organization Point #2: Using tumblr. Does anyone out there use tumblr? What do you use it for? For those of you who don’t know or don’t care to blog, you may find you really enjoy tumblr. It’s kind of like tweeting but with photos, at least for me. It is also a very simple way to dip your toes into blogging, as it certainly isn’t all about photos. That’s just what I use it for. Anyway, you can peruse everyone’s blogs right on the site in one easy feed, and mark your favorite posts. You can also re-post those that you like.

So, how does this help you get organized? The result is that you can create style files of your favorite images. You can also tag them. For example, when I want to look at inspiring black and white designs I’ve been collecting, I can go into my own tumblr blog and search “black and white” and they’ll all come up in a wonderful stream (here is mine if you want to see what I mean). The catch is that you have to be an obsessive compulsive tagger to make this work. Overall, it’s the perfect spot to store all kinds of inspiration and ideas. If you do post to tumblr, please remember to give credit to publications/websites/blogs/photographers if you are using their images.

Here are just a few of my favorite design people to follow on tumblr (tumblr has even informed me that they are among my “tumblr crushes” because I mark their images as favorites the most often!):

The Brick House

Yvestown

Design Evolution (this post Michelle wrote is how I found out just what the heck tumblr was in the first place – seriously, how does everyone keep up with the latest and greatest web tool? It’s ridiculously overwhelming!)

The Beautiful Soup

My Farmhouse

P.S. Doesn’t this office fit the color palette from yesterday? It does a much better job than I did, and it wasn’t even trying!