AUG 26, 2002, 12:00AM EDT
Kimberly Nelson Hatfield
Getting � and staying � organized is the golden rule for making your home office work. And it doesn’t need to be time consuming, expensive or state-of-the-art.
“There’s a big misconception when people set up a home office � that is, if they don’t have a large room, they can’t be organized. That is simply not true,” says Amanda Kuhl, principal of Consider It Done in Somerville, Mass.
Kuhl recommends some steps for getting organized. For instance, spend 15 minutes a day going through papers and identifying what to read, to act on, to file and to archive.
Jayne Pelosi, principal of Renaissance Interior Design in Duxbury, Mass., suggests replacing inboxes with vertical step files that are tiered to keep papers in priority order.
“When you put things in an inbox, the thing on top gets done; the 10 underneath don’t. What should be on your desk are your hot files � your hot prospects and current projects,” says Pelosi.
Experts also urge people who work from home to keep just one calendar.
“When I see people with two or three organizers, calendars and PDAs, then I see a lot of room for double scheduling,” says Kuhl.
As for storage, Pelosi converted a closet into an office storage space for less than $50.
“Take down the old hanging bar and replace it with white, coated shelving and you have a whole closet full of shelves. It’s efficient and it’s streamlined,” she says.
The lines between your work life and your home life can be blurred when your workspace is part of the bedroom or a corner of the kitchen. The good news is that “people who are trying to balance work and family are often more productive in an output-per-hour sense,” says Maureen Scully, professor of management at the Center for Gender in Organizations at Simmons College’s Graduate School of Management.
Managing the boundaries between work and home life is a question of personal balance. “Some people like to be firm about it. They close the door and work from 9 to 5. And for others, it’s the fluidity that enhances their productivity,” Scully says.
Work-life balance may be one of the more difficult challenges that all workers face, and perhaps women especially. To measure balance, Scully suggests asking, “Am I satisfied at work? Am I satisfied at home? Assess each realm and also ask if they are fueling each other.”
Finally, manage your technology. “I’ve known plenty of small business owners that get so caught up in the implementation of the technology that their business suffers,” says Andy Trask, one of the co-founders of Geek Housecalls Inc., an on-site computer-support company in Lexington, Mass.
For often less than $100 dollars an hour, he says, you can hire a technology expert to come to your office and help you manage system errors, organize your e-mail box, or maintain your network.
Kimberly Nelson Hatfield is a writer for the Boston Business Journal, an affiliated newspaper.