Working from your home can present some challenges if the space it not setup to create the best working environment. If the room is cluttered, then the disorder can have a negative effect on your productivity levels. Fortunately, all it takes is a little organization to get your home office ready for work.
When preparing to organize your home office, keep in mind that you do not have to organize everything at once. Instead, you can tackle small projects in the room one at a time. This gives you the best chance of getting things organized without getting stressed out about the room’s state of disarray.
Organize Paperwork
If you have stacks of paperwork, or even files and folders full of paperwork, it is time to purge some of that. Go through all of the paperwork to determine what you actually need of it. For any receipts or financial documents, invest in a scanner and turn all that paper into some digital files. This gives you less clutter and an easy way to find the paperwork on your computer.
Create an Clutter-free Work Area
Since you will probably already have a computer and printer in your home office, be sure to get a desk or table with plenty of space for your equipment. If the desk space looks too cramped it can result in more clutter accumulating in the area. If you already have a desk, try buying some shelves to put on the wall by the desk. This gives you a way to keep things off the desk so that it looks free of clutter. A printer stand can also be a useful place to store the printer. The stands usually have drawers, which is a great place hid paper, toner and other printer supplies.
Organize Your Office Supplies
Get something to keep all of your pens and pencils in so that they are not lying on your desk. If you have a drawer on the desk, you can use it. Otherwise look for a cup or other type of writing utensil holder to keep things tidy.
Keep file folders available for any new documents, receipts or mail that comes into your home office. You can label the files in a manner that fits your need, such as ‘urgent,’ ‘file,’ and ‘shred.’ Then set a time aside at least once a week to go through those folders and empty them. This will do wonders to keep the home office organized.
Have a special area for back up supplies which you can buy in twos or in bulk. It is important to always have the supplies you need on hand as you don’t want to run out of something when you need it. Keeping an inventory on hand that you stock up on during your hours off will avoid having to make a quick trip to the store when your should be working.
Scan Your Receipts and Documents
If you save all your receipts for budgeting or tax purposes, you know it doesn’t take long to have a box overflowing with receipts. And if you don’t keep up with tracking you can feel overwhelmed by all of the accounting. Likewise other important documents related to your business need to be maintained for future reference.
A document scanner is a machine designed specifically for scanning and cataloging receipts and other documents. Not only will you have an image copy of all your receipts but the scanner software will extract the pertinent information. This data can then be used to create expense reports or exported to other financial software.
Document scanners are a smart invention and a huge time saver for the home business owner or anyone else who has to track expenses. However, the technology is far from perfect and scanning receipts can have received mixed reviews from customers. Scanning regular size documents is easy though, so if receipts are only a small portion of what you need digitizing, this kind of scanner will meet your needs well.
