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Archive for home office

Great things can happen in an organized home office.

The Organized Home Office: 3 Key Ingredients

Posted by Carolyn on
 November 9, 2015
Home Office Sign

Making sure you maintain an organized home office takes basic ingredients and your own spice.

So you’ve decided to work from home – congratulations!  Chances are you’re going to love working in your jeans and t-shirt, without a commute and with the flexibility that a home office provides.  It takes some work, however, to ensure your work space is functional, productive, has all the tools you need and  is available to you when you need it.  These are important criteria for an organized home office.  Here are some key ingredients that can help your office meet those criteria.

Basic Ingredient: An Organized Home Office is Separate from Home Functions

When setting up a home office, clients frequently start by taking over a small part of an existing space in their home.  This is a great way to see if working at home is feasible.  You know the place: the computer table in the kitchen; the family computer desk in the den; the craft corner in the basement rec room.  These areas are often already multi purpose space.  Its where home work, crafts and family organization and communication are happening.  Adding the additional pressure of a home office is sometimes more multi than these multi purpose spaces can manage.  Professional organizers  are brought in to  help organize the home office when clients find the geography project has exploded over the latest market research report and invoices ready to be mailed.  

When setting up a work at home location, establish a means of separating the business work you do physically from anything else that might happen at that work station.  If you can’t  fully take over a space, and have to share with other household activity, use a cupboard, box or even just a shelf where your material can be collected and put away before the homework starts up.  Role model to other family members that you put away your material when not actively working at the common space; they are expected to put away their things when leaving the space.  It might take a bit of reminding at first but your material will be secure and the work station can continue to be used by the family while you enjoy the advantages working at home can bring.

House big enough you get your own corner office?  Lucky you. Just make sure that room has a door.  Opening the door is like stepping into a corporate setting.  It says “I’m at work”.  Same with the office-in-a-box approach.  When you empty the box onto the dining room table, you have arrived at work for the day.

Resist the temptation to use a corner of your bedroom for your home office.  The bedroom is a place for rest and relaxation, not work.

Binding Ingredient: An Organized Home Office is Mostly Self-Contained and Holds its own Tools.

Great things can happen in an organized home office.

Great things can happen in an organized home office.

Think of this as permission, resources permitting, to shop for the tools your office will need and to keep them in your office, even if it is just a box.  All too frequently we identify the space for our office space and then use tools from elsewhere in the house to stock it;  paper from the family computer station, stapler from the kitchen, pens from the junk drawer, hole punch from the craft boxes.  This can be an excellent use of extra tools around the house.  It can also mean, however, that your office is raided when that hole punch is needed for the science project.  You will need holders for those tools.  Use a decorated juice container from your 8 year old, or top of the line from the office supply store.  It  doesn’t matter.  What promotes keeping an organized home office is that the tools are there when you need them and can be easily accessed.  The more self contained it is, the more likely your organized home office will stay organized.

Spice it Up: Add Your Unique Style

desk with flowers in vase

Add some spice to make your organized home office reflect your taste.

It might be a business office, but one of the advantages of a home office is the freedom to decorate to your own style and taste.  Go to town and have fun.  The more comfortable and personal you make the space, the more likely you are to keep it organized and functional. About to land the company’s next largest order?  Do it in style.  If your office is stored in a box while supper is on the table, add your own taste with a special picture, pencil holder or the coolest file folders you have ever seen.  Using a cupboard?  Try putting your special pictures on the inside of the cupboard and leave it open while you are at work.

A home office can be fun and flexible.  A home based business can be rewarding.  Keep yourself productive with an organized home office that reflects your business needs and your own personality.

 

Home Organizing Office Organizing
Tags : home office, organized home office, Organizing Maintenance, Professional Organizers in Canada, SOHO
Organizing with our ears involves using what we hear to help us organize.

Organizing with our Ears – Auditory Processing Modality

Posted by Carolyn on
 October 14, 2015
Organizing with our ears involves using what we hear to help us organize.

Organizing with our Ears – Auditory Processing Modality

Organizing with our Ears is the second in a series on organizing using one’s processing modalities.  In 2010, Denslow Brown of Coach Approach for Organizers and Organizer Coach published The Processing Modalities Guide.  This is the second of nine modalities that Denslow addresses in the guide.  Auditory processing involves what we hear.  It includes sounds around us as well as what we say.

Organizing with our Ears – Strength and Sensitivity

Like visual processing, auditory processing modality can be described on a strength continuum as weak, competent or gifted. Someone who is gifted might have perfect pitch or be able to identify sophisticated meaning from sound.  Someone who is auditorily weak does not rely primarily on their hearing to understand, learn or interface with the world (that’s me).  Organizing with our ears can also be identified as hypo or hyper sensitive.  Someone who is hypersensitive might become overwhelmed or irritated when there are too many sounds at one time such as in a crowded party room (me again).

Organizing with our Ears – Organizing Strategies

Professional organizers and those trained in processing modalities, understand that using one’s dominant processing modality to organize, increases the ability to stay organized and maintain an organized environment.  Most of us use more than one modality to interface and learn from the environment.  In fact we likely use several.  A few will be stronger, more dominant, than the others, and therefore most useful in staying organized.

If you are auditorily sensitive, many different sounds may be irritating, annoying or exhausting.  Simple, soothing sounds may be pleasing and help with focus. Try the following strategies:

  • Use soothing background music to drown out or distract your ears from a noisy room or street below your window.
  • Use pleasant background music to help you focus on a task.

If you are auditorily strong, you remember items by their sound or a sound associated with them.  Words and tones are meaningful to you.  Try these strategies to keep you organized:

  • Label file folders by names that first come to mind when you think of the contents e.g. “Family Pictures I Would Keep Forever” rather than “Family Pictures” . 
  • Use sounds on your watch to help you keep track of time.
  • Use a timed playlist on your phone or digital music player to help you keep track of time spent on a particular project or task.
  • Talk yourself through the steps of an organizing project.  Write them down and say them out loud while you work your way through each step.

If you are naturally attuned to sounds – and like to play with sounds and words – use that skill and strength to your advantage when organizing.  Next post in the series will look at the kinesthetic processing modality.

Organizing Challenges Organizing Strategies
Tags : Clearing Clutter, Filing, home office, managing mess, Organizing Maintenance, organizing strategies, Time Management, Understanding disorganization

What to Know Before you Work at Home

Posted by Carolyn on
 March 29, 2014

In a recent article “What to know when you are work from home” in The Post, the author has identified staying focused, security of your work and maintaining a social and professional connections and key components of a successful workspace.  While these are very important, I would add a fourth key element of protecting your workspace.

When setting up a home office, client frequently decide to start by taking over a small part of an existing function space in their home in order to see if working at home will be feasible for their family or home life.  These multi function spaces frequently serve family tasks like home work as well as the new work tasks that have been added by a home office.  We then get called to help them out when they find the children’s homework is mixed in with the latest monthly or quarterly report or preparation of invoices.  

When setting up a work at home location, establish a means of separating the business work you do physically from anything else that might happen at that work station.  This can be accomplished through a cupboard, box or even just a shelf where you material can be collected and put away before the homework research starts up.  You can teach other members of the family that you put away your material when not actively working at the work station and that they are expected to put away their things when leaving the work station.  It might take a bit of reminding at first but your material will be secure and the work station can continue to be used by the family while you enjoy the advantages working at home can bring.

Office Organizing
Tags : home office, work at home, workstation

That Darn Paper

Posted by Carolyn on
 June 17, 2010

With the recent downsizing of my own parent, and the move of my SO to working from a home office, our house has a few too many boxes stashed in a few too many places.  SO and I have been making a serious attempt to empty, sort and purge the contents of those boxes.  I’ve become my own organizing client.  And just like everyone else, it is easier sorting someone else’s stuff.

This week we tackled a backlog of paper.  What a surprise I had to discover, as we fought for any extra storage space we could find for SO’s business files, many inches worth of old investment statements that were more than just a few years old.  Since many of the statements are available online, and they usually send us quarterly statements anyway, we chose to shred.  And shred.  And shred. Our recyble bin will be full this week.  Our filing cabinet has extra space and even a few shelves were liberated.  Goodbye paper.

Office Organizing
Tags : home office, Paper, Recycle, shred, Small office, SOHO

Home Office – Not to Abound

Posted by Carolyn on
 March 11, 2009

If you are working in a home office, you may have already identified that it is important for your work life balance to set up a form of boundary or border. Separation of work and home life is essential for good organization, good health and productivity. Here are a couple of ways to accomplish these borders:

  • Use screens, room dividers or use a bookcase/filing cabinet or other furniture as a room divider.
  • Use an office in a cabinet set up so that you can close your office at the end of your work day.
  • Have a separate phone line installed for your business.
  • Ensure that family and clients understand when you are available and when you are not. What are your working hours and when are you home for your family?
  • Get dressed each day for work. Establish a ritual for “entering” your office. Do you have your coffee/tea/water in hand?
  • Ensure that you have a storage closet or other space for supplies so that they don’t end up all over your home.

These tips will help you to maximize your focus while at work and minimize the intrusion while at home.

Home Organizing
Tags : home office, privacy, SOHO, Space

Keep it all Contained

Posted by Carolyn on
 February 26, 2009

I’m staying on the limited real estate theme today. With a small desk/work space, it is more important than ever to ensure all your work tools – pens, rulers, paper, drafting tools, memory keys – are as contained as possible. When small items have a home to be returned to, they are less likely to wander around your work space.

The containers for these items could be anything at all that works for you. If you are using vertical storage space, you will want something the fits on the space and is easy to get to. If the work space is in the open and subject to the public eye, you may choose decorative containers. If you have only yourself working in the space, why not use a clear container to help you locate what is inside.

If you are a tosser and dropper, and not likely to open a lid to put something away, then use open storage like bins, open boxes, baskets or a similar item. Once again, make sure the items you use on a regular basis are at your finger tips and the items you use occasionally are not sitting in prime real estate!

Office Organizing
Tags : Clearing Clutter, home office, managing mess, mess, organizing small stuff, organizing strategies, SOHO

Solutions for Limited Real Estate

Posted by Carolyn on
 February 25, 2009

Is your desk too small for the stuff that sits on top of it? Are you feeling cramped and penned in by hot files, current files, your computer and just the mere presence of your coffee cup?

Whenever possible, move to vertical storage and even a vertical desk. what? Put my desk on the wall?

Pretty much, that’s it. consider placing shelving units above your desk or, if space does not permit, even to one side of your desk. Then set up the items off your desk onto the shelves. Those things you use daily will be closest to you while the occasional items can sit on the shelves farther away.

Office Organizing
Tags : home office, managing mess, mess, office organizing, SOHO

Stressing over Garbage

Posted by Carolyn on
 December 18, 2008

Clearing out a client’s office with them, particularly offices with lots of paper, can be an illuminating experience. Not so much for me, but for the clients.

Typically at the end of the day, we end up with several bags or boxes of recycling mostly paper. There are usually another couple of bags or boxes of garbage. Finally, there is an inevitable collection of material that belongs to other people in the company and will be distributed accordingly or taken to a supply/equipment/archive store room. The end result is a calm and organized work space the even feels more productive, 4 – 6 bags of recycling and garbage in the hallway and a stack of stuff that is doesn’t belong in the client’s office.

When clients are confronted with the debris in the hallway, the illumination begins; “I can’t believe I was so stressed about so much stuff that turned out to be not worth keeping or not even belonging to me!” Bingo.

Take a look around your office. Cluttered? Messy? Paper got you stressed?

I highly recommend a clear out and overhaul. You may be surprised at how much stress you are spending on garbage.

Office Organizing
Tags : Clearing Clutter, home office, managing mess, mess, organizing paper accumulation, Paper, reasons for disorganization, SOHO, Understanding disorganization

Hot Spots – Where are They?

Posted by Carolyn on
 December 16, 2008

I have written a couple of times recently on the importance of establishing hot files in your office or work area, (see Hot, Hot, Hot, The Disappearing Desk). One question which consistently surfaces when working with clients, is “what is the optimal place for the hot files?”

The answer? There isn’t one; the location of the hot files really depends on how you function in your office. The best location will depend on your organizing personality, the nature of your work and the space you have available. Here are some examples in no particular order:

  1. In a vertical file holder on your desk. Works well if you have the space on your desk, your need to see the files right in front of you.
  2. In the top drawer of your filing cabinet. Works well if you have the file space, you require visual calm in your office, you don’t need the visual cues to remember what’s there.
  3. In a vertical file holder on your credenza (table). Works well if you have the space on a credenza or table, you need visual cues to remember what’s in them.
  4. In the file drawer on the right/left pedestal of your desk. Works well if you require visual calm, have the space in the drawer, are in and out of the files freqently during the day, don’t need them right in front of you to remember what’s in them.
Office Organizing
Tags : desktop, Files, home office, office organizing, Paper, SOHO

The Disappearing Desk – Take 2

Posted by Carolyn on
 December 9, 2008

Many people struggle with a desk covered in paper, files, reports and debris from the work day. There is now doubt, trying to get a grip back once this has got away from you can be an overwhelming task. Try this to get back control:

  • As usual, start small. Take 5 minutes first thing in the morning to sort just one corner of your desk. Sort the paper by date, project, time line or subject. There is no right or wrong way only a way that makes sense to you.
  • At the end of the day, take another 5 minutes to file the piles you sorted this morning. Sorting takes far more brain power, decision making and emotional/intellectual energy than filing. Do the filing at the end of the day.

Try this for 28 consecutive work days. I promise you that at the end of the 28 days your desk and your organization will be at a very different place – a very good place.

Office Organizing
Tags : desktop, home office, Paper, SOHO
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