Home Office - How to Improve Productivity by Organizing Your Home
Are you frustrated with your office space? Do you hunt for a pen every time you put one down? Is the search for documents a half-day event? Is your paper filed chronologically - working your way down the pile to ‘one week ago’ and unable to pull out ‘four months ago’ for fear of a paper flood catastrophe?
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, how do you clear the clutter and gain control?
Space to Organize Is Essential
The biggest problem with staying organized in an office is that people set up a system and do not give themselves enough room to grow.
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.
Try to clean out and throw out enough to have a quarter or a third more empty space so that when you implement your new system, there will be space to expand. You may need to tweak your system, and having the extra space will encourage you to continue to organize.
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.
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.
For filing of large groups of clients, projects or invoices, use a single drawer for each group of related files. A tall filing cabinet can even be divided into alphabetical or chronological systems.
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.
After You Set It Up, Maintenance Is Next
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.
The system will also work for stuff that you need off and on as the project you are working on progresses. Things like price lists, if you’re dealing with products, lists and articles that you need to add to a website, rewrites and the like. If you need to refer to it continuously, then you want it close.
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.
Everything in Its 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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