Tag: National Organize Your Home Office Day

Clutter Hot Spot: Your Tech Accessories

The challenge with this hot spot is that there isn’t always just one spot.

Sometimes the tech pieces

are

all

over

the

place!

The original inspiration for the Clutter Hot Spot series was client interactions in January. And in one week, I had 3 clients who had tech accessories stirred up into every space we were organizing!

IF we ever hope to find them again, we need to assign JUST ONE HOME for our less-often used tech accessories.

In my office, our ONE tech accessory home is a desk drawer. Right next to me as I write this article. It’s not exciting or big or complicated. It holds tech items that we might need again. In preparation for writing this article, I looked in there earlier today. The boxes for my Apple watch and airpods are in there (new-ish). Extra lightning charging cables (we buy these a few at a time), charging cubes, earphone covers, users manuals, the extra cord that came with my new monitor in its labeled bag. Also, mesh bags for corralling tech accessories when we travel. A few items I came across are now obsolete, like my last two Fitbits and their very specialized chargers, and those are all now in the basket in the garage waiting for a E-Waste collection event.

Let’s review the important parts of the story above:

  • One and ONLY ONE home for tech accessories you might need again.
  • The habit of putting tech accessories in that ONE home when we get them, and putting them back in there after we use them!
  • Labeling the accessory and what it belongs with to eliminate future questions.
  • Everyone in the house knowing where the extra tech accessories live.
  • The habit around reviewing the technology at least once in a while, to determine what tech accessories we need to keep and which ones need to move along to E-Waste recycling.
  • Making sure your E-Waste actually gets recycled. Check your local recycling resources for E-Waste recycling near you. If you’re near me, check out my recycling page for resources. (https://peaceofmindpo.com/2019/06/26/organizing-resources-to-reduce-repurpose-and-recycle/)

Look around your home and establish that ONE SPOT for your extra tech accessories, and commit to moving your tech clutter there as you find it!

An Organized Person… Keeps the “Office” in “Home Office”

Today, the second Tuesday in March, is National Organize Your Home Office Day!

When working with clients, I have never heard the complaint that folks are TOO productive in their home offices, or that their home office is TOO much like an office.

Nope.

I am more likely to hear that a home office isn’t set up to actually get work done, that perhaps it has too much “home” and not enough “office”.

So, this week, let’s work on finding the balance between Home and Office in your home office.

 

Let’ get started!

(15 minutes) Set up those monthly Completed Papers files for your receipts, statements, paid bills and other completed paperwork for 2019, if you haven’t already.

(30 minutes) Clean out your in box.  Toss anything that is expired, redundant or just not important anymore.

(30-45 minutes) Using your monthly Completed Papers files, put away those papers that have been floating around your home office work space.  You know the ones.

(30 minutes) Decide once and for all what to do with all that miscellaneous tech floating around your home office.  The bowl on the desk of dead and dying IPods (oh, is that just us?), smart Phones and tablets.  You know, the ones that are too old to even have updates available, or that no longer hold a charge?  Sell, recycle, pass them along.  Just let them go if they have outlived their usefulness.  Same goes for those miscellaneous and unassigned cords cluttering up your drawers.

(As you go along) Set aside all the actual items that require further action, add the actions to your To Do list and make time this week to take those actions.  Items to be returned, books to go back to a friend or the library, forms to be returned to school, cookies to be mailed – ok, those are the items in my action pile for tomorrow!

 

What belongs in your Home Office?

Keep only your current work in your office and on your work space.  The work you need to do today, tomorrow and this week.  If you have files or papers that you need but NOT RIGHT NOW?  Those need to go away so that you can focus on the work that does need your attention right now.  Keep visible only that which serves you.

 

What does not belong in your Home Office?

Remove any unnecessary clutter.  Anything that is too much Home and not enough Office needs to go.  Deliver the non work items to the other places where they belong in your home.

Embrace National Organize Your Home Office Day, and spend a little time this week making your space more productive!

Nat’l Organize Your Home Office Day: Your Papers Need a Home

The second Tuesday of March is National Organize Your Home Office Day.

I have posted dozens of articles about paper management and office organizing.  Just last week, I was reminded of the importance of having a Home for Your Papers, and wanted to share!

Think about the idea of “Home”.  If a person has a home, you can typically find them there.  They start and end their day there.  If you need to send them something, you send it to their home so it’s waiting for them when they arrive.  A person’s home is their default, their normal resting place.

Our important papers need the same thing. Our papers need a home so we can find them again, pair them with related papers, and keep them safe.

(A word about technology:  Any of these suggestions also work if you keep only digital records of your information instead of actual paper!)

There are three main categories of important papers.

  1. Active papers:  Papers that require a further action soon.  Bills to pay, coupons for an upcoming purchase, forms to complete and return.  The most important thing about Active Papers is to take action on them, so their HOME needs to be convenient and close at hand.
    For example, when I finished opening mail with a client recently, we had just a few small piles of papers to deal with.  After I filed some passive papers, we set up her bills to pay, and she tucked into her purse the village vehicle sticker info and some coupons for her errands later in the day.
  2. Passive Papers: Passive papers are papers we need to keep for a certain amount of time, like paid bills or bank statements or tax returns.  We need to keep them  for a certain amount of time, and then we need to make sure we purge / recycle / shred them once in a while, so they don’t pile up and we end up with 20 years of paid utility bills in a file drawer, or grocery receipts from 6 years ago in a shoebox.  The most important thing to remember about Passive Papers is to put them away instead of leaving them pile here and there, and to regularly purge them, like once a month or once a year, so that they don’t accumulate.
    For example, today I went through bank statements with a client to prepare to do her taxes.  It was easy to find the necessary statements since ONLY 2017 and a few 2018 statements were in the file – all the others are bundled up with previous year taxes and cleared out of the drawer!
  3. Archival Papers are Papers that we need to keep for the long term.  Birth / marriage / sacramental certificates, social security cards and pass ports, house purchase papers, car or boat titles, wills, etc.  The most important thing to remember about Archival Papers is to protect them, so their HOME needs to offer protection (a safe or a bank safety deposit box) and may be a little less convenient to access.  But that’s OK, since we don’t need to access Archival Papers often.  For example, I registered my youngest for high school last Saturday and his birth certificate and social security number were both required.  Grabbing both took all of 10 seconds, since we have one and only one very safe and specific place for such vital documents.  And of course, I PUT THEM BACK when I was done with them!
  4. There are probably more than 3 types of papers, if we add in memorabilia or photos, but those will be a discussion for another day!

So, as we think about organizing our Home Office on National Organize Your Home Office Day, make sure to have HOMES for these three types of papers.

  • Active work space and open storage for tackling your to-do pile, and time set aside in your schedule to take care of business.
  • Closed storage, perhaps a file cabinet drawer or a desk drawer, for your passive papers.  Plus, a regular habit to regularly (weekly or monthly) file passive papers, and every month or year to purge your outdated passive papers.  And
  • Safe storage, perhaps a portable safe or a locking file cabinet drawer, for your important archival records and vital documents, so you can always find them when you need them.
To:

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National Organize Your Home Office Day: My High Tech Me Project

Did you know?  The second Tuesday in March is National Organize Your Home Office Day.

I’m entertained by the fact that, thanks to technology, I started this blog seated at my favorite satellite office, the Corner Bakery near my home.  Not to be confused with my favorite Conference Room, the Beverly Bakery, also near my home and where I take my breakfast meetings.  The real irony is that I’m avoiding baked goods, but I really love these places!  And now, I’m home in my actual office.

These “home office” musings remind me that my “Home Office”, or in my case, just my “Office”, is anywhere that I am at that moment, thanks to technology.  There is a dark side of tech, though:

I’ve been struggling with the myriad methods of communication available, and how to manage them all well.  For example, last summer, a friend asked “Did you get my message?”, so I went back to check my:

  • recent texts;recent voice mails on my mobile phone;
  • recent voice mails on our home phone;
  • FB messages on my personal page, and
  • FB messages on my business page;
  • professional email;
  • personal email;
  • at the time, cub scout pack email (as I was still Cubmaster and she is a scouting friend);
  • twitter; and
  • actual snail mail, and my really big white mail box because she lives down the street, and could have left something for me.

Ridiculous.  Not the message or the friend (she is lovely), but the number of places I had to check for communications.  Ugh.

Fast forward: I spent the first 7 weeks of 2017 working on what I called my High Tech Me project. My plan was to make the moving parts of my office experience work better together.  To organize my “office” and clear communication clutter, I organized my tech.  After assessing my needs, I (just to list a few steps):

  • streamlined my IPad and IPhone apps, and set up my laptop so all the devices communicate with each other;
  • set up my devices to update automatically overnight, and installed yet another external hard drive;
  • purchased a few more chargers and surge protectors for the places we all use them the most (and my chargers are pink as the only female in the house, to easily identify who swiped my stuff);
  • fully embraced Gmail for my personal email – it’s easy and has an app!, and I left behind our old email provider that doesn’t have an app and regularly froze up or kicked me out;
  • wi-fi enabled my new IPad (woot woot);
  • adjust my privacy and notification settings on all my social media and email accounts, to better manage my information;
  • explored Evernote, and now use it more fully to organize my thoughts and notes;
  • unsubscribed from dozens of retailers and email mailing lists; and
  • re-established a relationship with Siri on my apple devices, and while we still don’t always see eye to eye, we’re making progress (and Siri is now an Australian male voice and I refer to him as Nigel.  Whatever works.).

On this National Organize Your Office Day, remember these important points:

  • Technology is amazing and overwhelming, but it is just a tool.   It’s here to make our lives better, so set yours up to improve your life and not detract from it (and if you don’t know how, ask my web guru Claire and she will say – When in Doubt, Google it Out!)
  • BACK IT UP.  To the cloud, to a hard drive, to your lap top.  Back up your information. And get a case for your phone.  Yes, you,
  • Keep current on your device udpates, all the time.
  • De-Clutter or streamline what you can. Unsubscribe, send all your emails to one address, get rid of your home phone (we’re working on this one!), mirror your devices so you only have to remember one set-up, etc.
  • Make maintenance a habit.  I have actually added a line item to my daily routine to remind me to check different communication methods until it becomes a habit.