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Entries Tagged 'Office Organization & Productivity' ↓
Are you feeling overwhelmed, stressed out and frustrated every time you walk into your office? That’s no way to work! I’ve got 7 easy office decluttering tasks that you can tackle in your office and each one will take less than 10 minutes. Set the timer for 10 minutes every day and see what you can accomplish in just 7 days!
Office Decluttering Task #1: Recycle your phone books because you are now using google. This should take maybe 2 minutes, 1 to track them down, 1 minute to walk to the recycle bin, easy peasy!
Office Decluttering Task #2: Recycle or move software boxes to another location other than your immediate workspace.
Office Decluttering Task #3: Declutter your bulletin board. After a while we just tune out the ‘important’ stuff we placed on the bulletin board. Declutter by removing papers, schedules, cards and phone lists that are no longer relevant.
Office Decluttering Task #4: Remove garbage & dirty dishes. Gather up the coffee cups, plates and silverware that have gathered from lunch and get them outta there. Look around for wrappers, fast food containers and empty Starbuck’s cups and get them outta there!
Office Decluttering Task #5: Remove items that are not office related. Which of these don’t look like the other? Has your desk turned into a dumping ground for items that belong elsewhere? Gather toys, beauty supplies & small tools and return them to ‘elsewhere.’
Office Decluttering Task #6: Let go of extra office supplies. Do you have old binders, hanging file folders and 3 extra staplers? Maybe it’s time to dump them or donate them depending on their condition; don’t clutter your “prime real estate” with stuff you don’t use.
Office Decluttering Task #7: Minimize personal mementos. Now, I”m not saying you can’t display your pictures of your old Aunt Betty’s glamour shots, but do keep the volume down. Too many nick nacks, photos and cards on display make for a visually cluttered office. If you must keep them, put half away and switch them out by rotating every few months.
For more tips on how to get organized in your office, please read more right here! And if you have a comment, I’d love to read it right here!
Tags: declutter, decluttering tasks, DIY organization, Home Organization, Home Organization Blog, office organization, recycle, software, Starbucks
Not everyone associates with color, but when you do, please embrace it even in your organizing systems! Spruce it up, spice it up, color it up!
Where can you easily incorporate color in your life & in your organizing systems?
Walls
- Wherever you’re working, a space big or small, find a color that you love for the walls! Think about how you want to feel when you’re working in the space as you choose your colors. Do you want to be productive, energized, calm or invigorated? If you aren’t sure what to choose, work with an interior designer who specialized in color.
Folders
- You may want to choose file folders for your file cabinet in vibrant colors.
- You may want to use decorative or colorful folders for your action system.
- You may want to use folders in colors that you associate with: green for money for the “Bills to Pay” folder, red for urgent for the “To Do” folder.
Colorful bins & baskets
- If you’re going to stash it in a bin or basket, make it attractive to your eye.
Colorful labels or picture labels
- This is a great one for children’s toys. Consider taking photos of the toys in a bin, printing and laminating it and then taping it to the front of the bin. This will help teach kids where to put things away!
Holiday Storage Bins
- When the holidays roll around, so do the colorful organizing bins in the stores. Perhaps you would like to have all green bins for Christmas and all orange bins for Halloween. This will make them stand out so you can find the holiday decor you are looking for quickly!
Think about how you relate to color and get creative where you incorporate it into your organizing systems! For tips on how to enjoy your office space, please click here.
Tags: DIY organization, file cabinet, folders, holiday organizing bins, home, Home Organization, Home Organization Blog, labels
So much work, so little time! How do you make sure that you organize your time to get your most critical tasks done? How do you decide what your most critical tasks are? First, I would highly recommend that you read the book, “Eat That Frog” by Brian Tracy-good shtuff! But for now, each day I want you to start the day thinking about your “frog” which will be your most important task for the day and “eat that frog” or otherwise tackle that task so you know that you’ve gotten your most critical task done. All the rest will fall in place. Your frog is:
- Your biggest, most important task
- The task you are most likely to procrastinate on
- The task with the greatest positive impact
Your frog may have a financial consequence, it may have a deadline or it may need to be eaten before someone else can do their work. Whatever your frog may be, you need to schedule time directly into your planner to get ‘er done. According to Bill Zipp, scheduling a task into your planner is “putting the rock on the calendar.” This is a way to make sure a task has time allotted to get it done vs. just hoping you can fit it in. No hoping, only critical planning here!
For more tips on how to organize your time, please stay here and keep reading. 
ur “frog” is you biggest, most important task
Your “frog” is the task you are most likely to procrastinate
Tags: Brian Tracy, DIY organization, eat that frog, Home Organization, Home Organization Blog, organize your time, time management, tips on how to organize your time
“There’s no correlation between how long you sit at your desk and what you accomplish.”
Kenneth Ziegler
This, my friend, is a very true statement. We can sit at our desks and look busy, we can sit at our desks and feel busy, we can sit at our desks and pretend to be busy. But just because we are sitting there, doesn’t mean we are getting BIG things done. Hmmm, how many different distractions can you think of that can take you away from your most important tasks? Here are a few I can think of:
- Texting
- Instant messaging
- Socializing
- Talking on the phone
I’m sure there are more but you get the picture. Sitting at your desk does not always = getting important tasks done. So what can you do improve time management and accomplish more at your desk? Ready for the answer?
Stay completely focused for 20% of your day which is 96 minutes.
This doesn’t mean that you only work for 96 minutes per day. What it means is you focus on your most critical task of the day interruption free. This means:
- No texting
- No web surfing
- No email
- No phone calls-left voice mail do it’s job
- No Farmville
- No open door time
Have you ever went into work when no one else was there? Wasn’t it incredible how much you got done without interruptions? Well, this is what you should strive for every day: 96 minutes. You will probably get more done in 96 minutes than you usually get done all day! The rest of the day will still be filled with tasks, but you will know that you got your most important task(s) out of the way. Try it, you might like it! For more tips to stay organized and on task, please read more here.
Tags: desk, DIY organization, facebook, FarmVille, Home Organization, Home Organization Blog, office organization, stay on task, stay organized, time management, twitter, work
Files for Office Organization
Have you ever had a project that needed to be completed but you kept getting sidetracked and felt like you were spinning your wheels? It can be very frustrating, especially if you’re working under a deadline or someone is waiting for you so they can complete their portion of the project.
If you work from your home office, like I do, you may have an abundance of distractions. When you are at home it’s easy to see the things that need to be ‘done’ around the house such as laundry, sweeping, errands, etc. Staying focused at home has it’s own real challenges. So, here are 5 organizing tips to help you stay on task so you can get those projects whipped out!
Organizing Tip #1: Purge paper and get it down to the paper and files you truly need. This will mean less to wade through to get to your work.
Organizing Tip #2: Clearly label your files, you can’t beat the clean look of labels made from a label maker. This will allow you and others in your office to locate files more easily.
Organizing Tip #3: Keep a pad of paper next to your computer to jot down notes about other tasks, lists or ideas that pop into your head. This will prevent you from getting off task by changing gears and doing something else. It will also ease your mind that you won’t forget about these other tasks.
Organizing Tip #4: Schedule critical tasks directly into your planner to ensure that you are scheduling enough time to get them done. Critical tasks may be tasks that are connected with deadlines or financial consequences. When you have them in your schedule, it will help you say no to other demands on your time.
Organizing Tip #5: Avoid interruptions while working on your critical tasks. There’s pretty much no way you can avoid interruptions during your work day, so just focus on at least 1-2 hours of time without checking email, instant messages or texts and let your voicemail do the work for you. It’s amazing what you can knock out when you limit interruptions for at least a portion of your day.
Use these office organizing tips to stay on task and if you’d like to read more about trying out organizing systems, please stay with me here!
Tags: critical tasks, DIY organization, files, home office, Home Organization, Home Organization Blog, networking, office organizing tips, organizing tips, work
We usually spend a lot of time in our offices and at our computers and I think it’s so important that we don’t feel overwhelmed and even feel good in our space! Here are 7 office organizing tips to help you organize and enjoy your space:
Office Organizing Tip #1: Clear your visible spaces first. Clear the top of your file cabinet before clearing out drawers. It will give you space as well as motivation to keep going when you see a clear space.
Office Organizing Tip #2: Just take one area at a time, no reason to overwhelm yourself here! Just dig yourself out one area at a time and you will get it done.
Office Organizing Tip #3: Let papers go that you no longer need. Is it a duplicate? Is it expired? Does someone else have this same information? Is it still relevent? Are you really going to read it?
Office Organizing Tip #4: Keep a flow going in your office by knowing where each type of paper will be kept. Where will you keep paper you are actively working on? How about long term reference information-probably in the file cabinet. How about archive papers and files that shouldn’t be taking up valuable real estate in your office? Banker’s boxes perhaps?
Office Organizing Tip #5: Place supplies and reference books that you use the most closest to your work space for convenience and efficiency. Place items used less often such as back up supplies, further away, higher or lower. You can walk over and get them when needed.
Office Organizing Tip #6: Find ways to personalize your space and enjoy your space without making it cluttered. Yesterday I lit a candle while I worked and I loved it!
It’s fine to put out some personal items or photos, but it’s also important to strike a balance between personal and cluttered. You may want to stay away from displaying lots of cards or bulletin boards covered in photos. In my office I display a few items that have sentimental value to me.
Office Organizing Tip #7: We work, we spread out, we get busy and offices get messy. Once you have systems in place, then it’s easy to restore order because you know where to put things away. Make sure you take time on a regular basis to restore order in your office so things don’t get out of control. Ten minutes at the end of every day is a great or 30 minutes on Friday afternoons to ensure you start the next work week on the right foot!
Organize your office, then add some personal touches so you enjoy your time there too!
Tags: bulletin board, DIY organization, home, Home Organization, Home Organization Blog, office organizing tips, organize your office
Don’t be afraid to give a new organizing system a whirl. Use it, give it some time, give it a fair shake and see how it goes. For example, you may try out a file box like this:
But you may find that you don’t like opening the folder and dropping papers in. Perhaps you feel like you can’t “See” your papers so you don’t use it. No problem! Then try something like this instead:
The key here, very important, is that you use each tray for one type of paper and you label the tray. Examples: To Do, To Read, Bills to Pay, etc. This may be enough to make you feel like your papers are visible. You don’t know until you experiment a bit.
In my own office I was using a step sorter for my business files:
But eventually it stopped working for me because the folders were getting too heavy and falling forward. So now I use a file box-easy enough to change!
Changing organizing systems isn’t a failure, some things work, some things don’t and you just have to play around with what works for YOU!
Tags: DIY organization, file box, Home Organization, home organizing, office organization, organizing systems, step sorter
Paper piles can equal:
1) Stress
2) Wasted Time
3) Wasted Money
4) Lost Money
5) Stuff slipping through the cracks
6) Missed Events
7) Embarrassment
Did I mention stress? Oh ya, #1
To expand on time and money lost, here is a statistic courtesy of GOSystem.com:
Lost Documents
“30% of all employees’ time is spent trying to find lost documents.” *(2.4 hours per day!) At this rate, if you have 10 employees paid at $30/hour (including benefits) wasting 2 hours/day, your company could be losing $144,000/year!
With that in mind, here are 10 reasons why paper organization is awesome!
1) You can get your hands on what you need in just a few seconds-time saved!
2) You can feel confident that you have what you need at your fingertips.
3) You will feel less stress when you don’t have to dig and search for your paper.
4) You will feel calm when you open a nice, labeled, organized file drawer-so pretty!
5) If the IRS needs some documents, you won’t have to freak out. At least not freak out about knowing where they are.
6) It will be easier to gather your tax documents at tax time.
7) You can be a helpful resource for people who can’t find their papers.
8) You will be able to focus on your work in your office instead of the mess.
9) You will appear pulled together when someone else comes into your office-appearances can be powerful.
10) You may even find misplaced money in the form of cash, gift cards or uncashed checks.
If you liked this, then you’ll love reading 10 more reasons organization rocks!
Tags: DIY organization, home, Home Organization, Home Organization Blog, IRS, paper organizing
The kids are back in school and a new routine has been born-hooray! My kids and I are more night owls than morning birds and we’ve had to adjust to an early morning schedule but frankly I think my kids are doing better than I am. At the same time, I really am loving the new freedom of having a quiet office by 7:30 am and how much you can actually get done when you get up early! Once I’m up I’m OK, it’s just getting out of my warm bed that’s challenging. And it’s going to get harder as colder, gray northwest morning start setting in… Actually, it’s gray today, imagine that.
So, this morning I walked back in the door after kid drop-off and started with breakfast. I have a healthy to-do list to tackle today including creating a PowerPoint Presentation for a talk at our local elementary school. As I was moving about my house I noticed my phone sitting by the back door. Now how did that happen? It’s always connected to me. But oh how freeing! Amazing that I was plugging right along without thoughts of texting or the compelling need to look over at my phone. I left it where it sat and here I am type, type, typing away listening to music on Pandora. While typing, something came up that created a “need” to send a text. But oh no, I will not stop now, I’m on a roll! Although, it’s amazing how strong the pull is to run down and knock out a text.
So, once again, it goes to show that you really can be more productive if you put aside distractions. I know, I know, you can’t run away from phones, instant messages or emails all day, but at the very least, you CAN focus on your most critical task of the day by eliminating distractions. Even an hour of distraction-free time will help you accomplish awesome things! Man, can I make it for a whole hour? Ooooh, I think I already have half an hour of credit!
Tags: critical tasks, DIY organization, home, Home Organization, Home Organization Blog, Pandora, phone, PowerPoint, texting
Household Hub Notebook
When school starts, the paper keeps on a rollin’ in! When I work with clients they often struggle with the paperwork for upcoming events for school and sports as well as party invitations . These papers usually end up on the kitchen counter in piles, on the fridge or plastered all over a bulletin board. Enter the ‘Household Hub Notebook’ that I created and use with my clients who have children. This is a notebook to store the backup information for upcoming events. You enter the event into your planner and then keep the backup info. in the notebook. When the event has passed, pull it out and recycle. And I’m going to tell you how to create your own!
The front of my notebook has a reminder sheet slid into the front of the binder for the types of papers that I recommend storing in your notebook:
1) Sports Schedules
2) Snack Schedules for classes or teams
3) Team Phone Lists
4) Part Invitations
5) Travel Itineraries
6) Event Invitations such as weddings & birthday parties
7) Gift Cards
Many people like to have a “Menu” section for take-out menus and coupons
9) School lunch menus
10) Event tickets or event flyers
Start with a sturdy 3-ring binder. In the front of the binder you may want to place business card pages for frequently used cards:
Then I place a sheet in a page protector for emergency contact information:
Next I place a sheet for emergency health information should someone have to contact 9-1-1:
Next I use page dividers labeled with each family member’s name so they have their own section:
Many families like to have a section for each family member as well as school & menu sections.
In each section I place 5 heavy duty page protectors so you can slide the information into each section easily:
The “Household Hub Notebook” is stored near where you would want to access these papers on a regular basis. Families love this notebook because everyone knows where to look for their event information, even Dad and it eliminates piles! For more organizing tips for paper that comes home from school, please read more here.
Tags: DIY organization, home, Home Organization, Home Organization Blog, household hub notebook, organize paper
