How To: Create Home Office Workflow
Clearing the clutter to get the productivity is a battle for me. My home office is either a kitchen table with dirty cereal bowls and a dinosaur brigade littered across it or our buffet top while I referee the bear hunt of the hour. Staying on top of our filing cabinet is right above "dust the baseboards" on my list of things I like to accomplish weekly yearly. So let's be honest - I tackle this beast in a three year rotation.
Today I tackle it WITH you.
Right now there's a mess of a three year stretch of household files mixed in with never-weeded-out files from my writing, photography and freelance work. Then there's everything that is Blogging. As well as an entire 8 inch folder bursting with kindergarten sketches, notes and hand drawn books. I started by taking out all the files that had to do with Household issues and were not current year. I set them aside in a box that I labeled along with that same year tax return. File away and be done! I was left with 2011 Household files that I quickly reorganized into "sets" - Bills, Banking, Tax information/Misc receipts. Medical.
To separate "Home" from "Work" I put a divider between the hanging files so I could keep things in line (easier) when I quickly needed to file away papers and print outs.
The divider is simple a 3-ring binder spine up. From there I had to tackle the actual organization of my workflow files. So I had to make a mess to get productivity as a result.
Once I had tossed about half what I thought I needed to save at one time I could decide on file folder names for my categories. Life List, Writing, Model Release Forms, Notes from readers and so on.
Projects=I Spy printable Master sheets as well as other freebies I offer on my website. (Also, future idea sketches.)
Look at that clean file drawer. Now when I'm standing at the buffet working I can easily turn around, open the drawer and grab (or file) the paper and information needed.
Ta'da!
As mentioned before I keep my current work files with me in my own lap top bag. I also keep my photo editing equipment and an extra external hard drive with me.
Now instead of chaos defining my office I can look beyond the laundry, dishes, crayons and my entire linen closet fashioned into a fort. Why is that? Magic, for one. But also - in 30 minutes or less I just created a system that's easy to maintain.
No longer afraid of my own kitchen table - I have the triangle of workflow in my dining room for productive work processing. How do you do it?
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I make a clear division between my desk drawers and the filing cabinet. Anything I use weekly can go in the desk. Everything else has to find a home in the filing unit. That keeps my desk from getting junked up. Also, at the end of each day, everything is cleared off the top of my desk. That way, I can start fresh in the morning.
Daisy
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