When
Your Home is Your Workplace
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Certainly organizing any household can be difficult, but when
your home is also your office, the challenge can be overwhelming. Statistics show there
are more than 25 million income-generating home offices in the U.S., and the number is
growing.
As someone who has worked from a home office for over 20
years and a mother with five grown children, Ive undoubtedly made every mistake
possible. The joy and flexibility of working at home can quickly turn your house into a
prison unless you take some preventive measures. Consider these tips to make living and
working at home less stressful and more productive:
- Position your office location
carefully. If at all possible, separate your workplace from your living
space, so you can physically leave your work. If youre working at home in order to
take care of children, consider hiring childcare while you work studies show your
work productivity (and potential for profit) will increase, and so will the quality of
life for your children.
- Continually eliminate clutter.
For years I have fought the myth that being organized means being a neatnik. When you
remove the old batteries, loose change, dried-up pens, keys to unknown places, expired
coupons, and postage stamps of strange denominations from the kitchen junk drawer, what
you have left is useful. If theres a paperclip mixed in with the keys, it
doesnt really matter. You can organize it more and it will be easier to keep
organized if you do, but it isnt a necessity. Clutter is frequently excess, and
excess cannot be organized!
- Choose a calendar system that
works for you. If youre working at home, chances are its
difficult to tell when business ends and home begins so youll probably want a
calendar or planner system that encompasses both your personal and professional life. In
addition, create a method for sharing information that all the family needs to know. It
may be something as simple as a calendar on the refrigerator with a different color pen
for each member of the family.
- Develop a system for meals to
suit your style. The need to eat can create chaos or increase quality of
life, depending upon how you approach it. I used to think that because I was a
professional organizing consultant, I should have all my meals for the week planned by
Sunday night. I soon discovered that even though my meal plan said it was spaghetti night,
I wasnt in the mood. Now, I keep lots of staples on hand so I can create something
delightful with the perishables I bought over the weekend.
- Create separate filing systems
for your personal life and professional life. Research shows that the
average person spends 150 hours per year looking for misplaced information. And, certainly
nothing creates a family crisis faster than a 15-year-old who needs a copy of his birth
certificate to get into drivers ed training, and you cant find it! If it fits
in a file, put it there and keep a list of your files, called a File Index
so you, or someone else, can find it when needed. (Kiplingers Taming the Paper
Tiger software creates the index automatically, and allows you to find
anything you file or store in five seconds or less. Buy it right here)
- Get enough sleep.
According to sleep experts, in order to be fully productive, you need to spend one-third
of your life in bed. Many of us say, "I dont have time to sleep"
but research shows we cant afford to continually deprive ourselves and others who
suffer because of our sleep deprivation. Sleep provides power to energize the body and the
mind. Dr. James B. Maas, author of Power Sleep says that if you fall asleep immediately
when your head hits the pillow or need an alarm clock to wake up, you need more sleep!
(And you may solve a problem while youre doing it!)
- Eliminate perfectionism.
Someone once told me that "A perfectionist is someone who takes great pains and gives
them to everyone else." If you want to make yourself and the others around you
miserable, insist on perfectionism. I have always found it fascinating that the most
disorganized people in the world frequently have pockets of perfectionism spices in
alphabetical order in a cupboard over a counter where theres no room to cook.
Productivity is about progress, not perfectionism!
If youre working at home, or thinking about it,
remember that "home is where the heart is" and it can be a great place to
make a living too!
© Barbara Hemphill 1999
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