Streamline For Success

Consider the following ideas to help you organize your homeoffice:

1. If possible, choose a room with a door as your home-officesite. When Lisa Kanarek, the author of Everything'sOrganized (Career Press, $16.99, 800-955-7373), converted herdining room to her home office, she found that enclosing her officenaturally led to organizational decisions. "I pared down mynonvital supplies and references," she says, "and thesmaller space keeps me from gathering too many `things.'I've found that when people have too much room, they often fillit--and when you work on a kitchen table, it's easy to let yourbusiness creep into the rest of your house."

2. Streamline your most important work area--your desk.Kanarek says that an uncluttered desktop eliminates unnecessarydistractions and helps you keep your mind on tasks that needimmediate attention. Keep only the items on your desk that you usedaily or weekly, such as a tape dispenser, business-card holder,pen and pencil holder, desk lamp and phone.

3. Utilize systems to manage what you have. Beyondcleaning, organizing is choosing a way to manage by selecting"systems"--habits or tools--to manage what you have,according to Kathleen Donoghue, general partner in the Buffalo, NewYork-based training and organizational development business AnotherAlternative Resources and member of the National Association ofProfessional Organizers. Two systems she suggests homebasedbusiness owners consider using are in/out-baskets and apaper-sorting system.

The in-basket includes lists of tasks and/or actual documentsyou intend to complete by the end of the workday, and should beempty by the time you leave your office. Your out-basket holdsitems ready for distribution to others. Instead of taking a vitalwork hour to return a form to someone, place it in the out-basketuntil you have enough to warrant a trip out of the office todeliver them all.

Donoghue recommends using a five-slot vertical organizer, thatis near (but not on) your desk, as a paper-sorting system. Labelslots within the sorter as "to do," "read,""await an answer," and "file." With a cleandesk and only a pile of papers to sort through, start by picking upeach paper and deciding in which category it should be placed.After you've sorted all the papers, place ongoing projects in aseparate place near your work surface, such as in a desk drawer. Ifyou have time, file the papers in your "file"section.

When creating a filing system, Donoghue suggests picturingyourself walking into a library. She says, "Recall the Deweydecimal arrangement of major subject areas interfiled withsubcategories." One way of arranging a file system is todivide the file drawer into major categories, such as"customers" or "equipment," followed by tabsindicating the subcategories--the company or individual'snames for customers, or the types of equipment.Typical categories might include "clients,""vendors," "accounts receivable/payable,""equipment" and "operations."

For Kathy Lawless, owner of the homebased Woodjie'sBakehouse in Vienna, Maine, organization includes not only keepingtrack of profits and losses, but also filing all her recipes--forrolls, scones, coffee cakes, and 30 types of breads. Lawless keepsher business plan handy in the front of her filing cabinet.Interfiled in the plan are her mission statement, balance sheet,resume, customer correspondence, and equipment-related documents."I can track my business at a glance by reviewing my businessplan when it is filed at the beginning," Lawless says. Shekeeps her recipes in two master cookbooks, rather than onindividual recipe cards, and hasn't yet lost a recipe.

4. Let equipment and technology help you organize. As ahomebased business owner, Kanarek uses a contact-management programwith an alarm that reminds her of appointments. The program alsoholds a template of a typical business letter from her businessenabling her to create letters quickly. She backs up her computerfiles each day so that she now has three (rather than eight) filedrawers, and plans to run a "paperless" office bymid-1997.

As the owner of Hospitality Basket, a welcome-basket companybased in Milford, Delaware, with representatives in 25 communities,Diane Lane oversees employee records for her own company andmaintains inventory communications with businesses across thecountry that furnish merchandise samples for the baskets, rangingfrom maps to pens to bakery coupons. Her advice? "Resistwriting phone numbers and messages on scratch paper and the backsof envelopes," says Lane. "Write all numbers in a bigspiral notebook. I've looked back a year later and foundnumbers I needed."

To assemble welcome baskets in her kitchen, Lane uses a shelvingunit, usually used for papers, that consists of 75 9-by-11-inchcubbyholes. She keeps a current list of items to include in thebaskets taped to the side of the shelving unit. "I can see allmy inventory and know when to restock," says Lane. "Whileassembling, I start at the top of the shelving unit and move down,checking the list to make sure I don't miss any item."

5. Utilize services to help maintain organization.Kanarek finds that receiving her business mail at a professionalmail service helps her to stay organized. "My personal andoffice mail never mix," she says, "and I feel safer notgiving everyone my home address."

Kanarek also subscribes to one of several voice-mail servicesthat are programmable, so that if she is using her phone, calls areinstantly diverted to her voice mail. She feels that hearing the"call waiting" signal on a business line is intrusive tobusiness transactions. Her office phone also rings only in heroffice, so that business calls don't become intermingled withher family's personal telephone calls.

"Organizationally impaired" homebased entrepreneursmay also find that a weekly housecleaning service frees them frombecoming inundated by clutter and disorder. Because a house cleaneroften requires that surfaces be cleared so he or she won't haveto "clean over papers," a homebased business owner may bemore inclined to include organization in their schedule the daybefore the housekeeper arrives. Also, a cleaning service eases yourresponsibility for cleaning tasks outside the confines of youroffice, freeing your time for home-office organization. As with allorganizing efforts and services, there is a cost--but the payoff isalmost always worth it.