Organize Your Home Office and Increase Productivity
Is your home office space affecting your productivity? Do you hunt for pens and pencils continuously? Is your document search an exercise in frustration? Are your papers a chronological stack of filing that is impossible to successfully navigate? Do you have an irrational fear of a paper flood catastrophe if you look for something at the bottom of the pile?
Every office deals with an excess of paper and whether large or small, your business is suffering when you are not operating in an organized space.
So, what do you do to wrestle the clutter-beast into submission?
Space to Organize Is Essential
One of the largest problems with staying organized lies in the lack of a system and not having enough room to effectively implement the system.
If you have spent the better part of a day cleaning out a drawer and replacing the items in organized, labeled files, but you cannot squeeze a single extra sheet, of paper, you have wasted your time and the un-filed papers will grow again.
Having space to add home office furniture in the form of filing cabinets and storage bins will help considerably with organization. Be sure and have at least one quarter to one third or more growing room when you implement your system. Extra space encourages you to keep up with your organization efforts.
This system includes everything from architectural drawings to products and documents you accumulate in the course of doing business.
Adding home office desks and storage organization items will go a long way towards making your organization implementation successful. Set aside time to get rid documents that are no longer relevant. This will allow for more space. Invest in a scanner and make PDF files out of things that can be stored electronically.
Implementing a Filing System
Do not make your system too complicated or it will be hard to follow through. Color-coding can be the easiest if you do not have too many categories. This is effective for systems, which only require ‘Income’, ‘Expense’, ‘Projects’, ‘Correspondence’, or something similar.
When filing large groups of things like clients, projects, and invoices use a single drawer for each group of files that are related. Using a four or 5-drawer filing cabinet is good in that it can be divided either alphabetically or chronologically.
For things that you use very frequently, consider getting a cork, posting or white board that you can place near your desk. This works for phone number lists, client projects and outlines, ‘To-Do’ lists and appointment calendars.
Maintenance
A system is only as good as the person using it is. If you do not keep it up, no system is useful. Starting with a smaller, simpler system of files in a cabinet near you is good. You can then take your daily or weekly items and store them in a more permanent place when you are finished.
You will find that this works for current project lists, product pricing, and things of that nature.
How Do You File?
Take a realistic look at how you file and consider the filing system. It might work better if you use labeled boxes or storage boxes if you tend to pile papers. This might be in addition or replace the standard filing cabinet. You need to find something that makes you feel comfortable, something you want to work with so that you continue to maintain it.
All Things Need a Place
It is an old saying, but all too true. Everything must have someplace to go back to. Avoid loose pens, pencils, papers cell phones, glasses and so on. Find a place to put them when you are finished with them, then put them back when you are done. Do not forget to reward yourself for a job well done, and keep your system going!
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