When my husband and I bought our house a few years ago we had no idea I'd later be freelancing out of the house. If we had, we might have thought about our space needs a little differently. My office now works but ONLY IF I keep it meticulously organized. It's a small space and for it to be functional, things need to be filed, delegated, shredded almost immediately to keep the paper volume manageable. When things get busy the state of my office can get out of hand quickly.
I've just found a good way to combat the mountains of paper and create an organizational system for the space I have to work with. I've just read Organize Your Office In No Time by Monica Ricci, a professional organizer in the Atlanta area. I've heard her speak before, so I know how great she is, but this book is what I needed. The tips make sense and are easy to follow. If I ever get off track all I'll have to do is refer back to the book.
Ideas from the book that I'm planning to incorporate include establishing filing categories that work for me and
for my business, building time into my schedule to keep on top of the organization, filing only what I'm sure I
need to keep instead of what I THINK I might need later, labeling my files more effectively and keeping an "In Progress" file current.
Whether you work at home or in an office building, how do you combat clutter? I'm still open to new ideas!
Thank you Betsy for sharing the info about my book! I'm so so glad it helped you! That makes me very happy! :o)
ReplyDelete~Monica
Sounds like i need this book. Remember our giant file cabinet that we filled to the brim w/ everything about anything? I still do that...
ReplyDeleteMy husband is a hoarder when it comes to paperwork and mail, so the only "organizational system" that works for us includes me, a Saturday, a huge garbage bag, and a creative lie about what happened to his stuff.
ReplyDeleteSounds great... I have discovered that while I have piles of paper in real life (it's my "system"), I am extremely organized when it comes to files on my computer. So, I now scan EVERYTHING and keep it in my own "dummy files" on the computer. As in, "Dummy, look in the file labled ---." It has my space clean, and I get to hoard as many what if files as I want.
ReplyDelete