How To Organize Your Home Office
Filed Under Decorating Ideas | Posted on July 7, 2008
If you are a lucy one, or going to be the luck one who can work at home? you need a home office, sharing the kitchen table just doesn’t cut it. Set up a room as a home office if possible, but if you can’t, make sure you have at least a desk where you can keep your home based business materials organized and they’ll stay undisturbed when you’re not working.
Before you start organizing, Set up a room as a home office, make sure your office is in the right place. You’re going to spend most of the day here. Don’t banish yourself to a room you don’t like. but if you can’t set up a separate room, make sure you have at least a desk where you can keep your home based business materials organized and they’ll stay undisturbed when you’re not working. If you like working in the dining room, put your office there. You’ll find creative ways to organize your things — such as putting containers in the credenza — to free up the table for dinner.
Planning the office layout is next, beginning with the placement of the desk or work surface. In my experience, few practices are more disempowering or unnerving than working with your back facing the entrance to your office. Unable to see visitors enter, you subconsciously feel uneasy and have difficulty concentrating. Make sure you have at least a peripheral view of all comings and goings.
The beauty of a home office is that it doesn’t have to look like a corporate office with a huge oak desk and wall-to-wall filing cabinets. Instead your home office can reflect your personality and perhaps in the beginning, your budget. Finding the right office furniture involves knowing
what you want, what you need and what you can afford.
No matter what type of home based business you operate, you need to be able to concentrate to work at home. This will be impossible if other family members are wandering in and out of your home office asking you questions or if the phone is ringing constantly.
Tell your family members what your work schedule is and ask them to respect it by not interrupting you unless absolutely necessary. If you have small children, the best thing to do is have someone else watch them while you work at home; if your spouse can’t do this, it can be expensive, but it’s necessary. You can’t do the job you need to do if you’re doing something else.
Some Tips:
Clear the space you want to organize
Complete One Section at a Time
Customize to Fit the Way You Think
Create a User-Friendly Filing System
Use Morgenstern’s Kindergarten Classroom Model
Organize for Retrieval, Not Storage
keep the room clean and tidy everyday
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