Organizing your Office

Written by Corrie Petersen

When you have a home office, whether it’s for a home based business or a home office for a corporation, you need to be organized. This is the only way you will be able to have success and work efficiently. When you work efficiently, you are more productive.

There are many things you can do to have an organized home office. Here are a few things that you can do to be more organized.

• Desk

Find an area in the house that is good for your desk. You will need a place that will give you privacy. You want a room that is big enough for everything you have for your business. You don’t want to feel cramped. If you have an office or space that is too small, you run the risk of having a cluttered desk. When your desk is cluttered, you might find yourself searching for things you need and that is a waste of your time.

Most desks come with a few drawers for filing and those should be used for your current work. Hanging file folders work great in these drawers. You should also get a file cabinet for files you may not use on a day to day basis. If you don’t have a file drawer in your desk or you need more room, you will want to have the file cabinet within good reach.

• Email

Email is one of the most important tools in business. It’s a means of communication between you and your employees, employer, customers, or clients. It’s one of the easiest ways to communicate and it’s one of the best ways. It’s also one of the hardest tools to keep under control. There are several ways you can keep it under control. Some of these tips will work with certain programs while others will work with any program.

File folders within your email program are a great way to keep emails regarding a certain project or from a specific person in one place. Some email programs will allow you to put in a rule and the email will go to a specific folder. While this is a great way to keep your emails filed where they go, it may be difficult to remember to check them. That’s why I feel it’s better to have them go to your inbox and then you move them manually when you are done reading them.

• Calendar

Setting appointments and scheduling tasks for your business is important. It’s the only way you will be able to keep track of everything. Using an online calendar is a good way to keep track using your computer. If you have a Blackberry or other device, you can link the two or access it from your phone. Another good reason to use an online calendar is to share with your Virtual Assistant. Your VA can schedule appointments for you, she can add appointments for you, and she can set up reminders for you.

Using these three organizational tips, you will have more success with your business. Organized people get more accomplished in a day than those that are not organized and always looking for things or over booking themselves.

Sometimes being organized is hard to accomplish. When you find something that works, you need to stick with it. You also need to schedule time to clean your desk, file, organize and go through your email, and calendar your time. When you do this at the same time on a regular basis, you will find yourself remembering to do it and it will become a habit for you.

Tags: Home Office Ideas, home office organization ideas, office organization