Keeping your Home office organized is critical to the success of working from home. It is important because your efficiencey hinges upon being organized.
For instance, if your desk is piled high with “stuff” and you have a time finding things, you will have to work twice as hard just to “find” things. You will spend more time sifting through the piles than actually accomplishing your important tasks.
Making a few minor changes to your working environment will make a huge difference not only in your productivity levels, also in your emotional state. You will feel like opening the door to your home office, you will be able to tackle the BIG stuff when the SMALL stuff is taken care of.
Here are some tips to get you started organizing your home office.
Invest in a good quality file cabinet. One that is easy to get to in the room yet out of the way from main work area. File those papers and documents in a form that makes sense to you. Color coding or colored file folders can help greatly in getting more organized and makes it easier to later find things. I have a 5 color system. Red for urgent things that need to be taken care of. Green for money matters. Yellow for things related to running my office such as supplies, warrantees, etc. Orange for ongoing project and white for New projects/clients. On the outside of my cabinet is a note with the color coding which also helps my assistant to file things when I get behind. The Mobile Filing Cabinet pictured here is one of our more popular file cabinets. Because it is on wheels it can be easily moved back and forth in your home office. This one is on special for $169. (a savings of $56.33).
Shred those things you no longer need and use file storage boxes to clean out the files you no longer need but need to keep for tax purpose.
Invest in high-efficiency electronics ~ A printer/scanner/fax device instead of all three can save you time, money and save needed space. You will use less electricity as you will only need to plug one unit in instead of all three
Get a CD rack ~ A CD rack will help you quickly locate the CD’s you use most frequently as well as store those you need for programs you may have to reinstall in an emergecny. You will be less likely to loose your CD’s and won’t have to waste precious time searching for the ones you need.
Invest in a separate phone line for your home office ~ It is simply more professional to have a separate line for your business and personal communications. This aleviates the worry about someone answering the home phone thinking it is a personal call when in reality it is for business. You want to always project a professional image for your business even if you work in your PJ’s.
Have a message board ~ A message board or cork board comes in handy for those critical business tasks, projects and contacts. It can be used for just in time projects, for those needing immediate attention as well as forms you need to have handy access to at all times. We use our to post our resale tax forms so that when we need to grab one they are right at our fingertips.