Tips & Tricks
We all struggle with a few basic areas in our homes and offices. In each area I’ve made a few quick suggestions that seem to help a lot of folks.
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The Golden Rule:
I can find everything I need within one minute.
- Put a trashcan next to your mailbox. You can throw out all the junk mail before it gets in the house. This alone will save you from tons of paper problems.
- When you get things asking you to join something or give money in some way, simply tear off your address label, write a message on it to please take you off the mailing list, put it in the prepaid envelope, and send it back.
- Cancel all magazines and catalogs you don’t really read.
Filing Systems- File things based on category, not alphabetically.
- One of each thing is enough.
- Use hanging folders and a high quality filing cabinet: you’ll be glad you did.
- An office is a place where you would want to meet a client.
- Your office needs to be separated from the other offices in the suite.
- Less is more. The fewer things you have, the better. Keep just what you need.
- Oh, boy—the biggie! Your desk should only have on it the things you use most often as well as a few mementos. Less is more!
- Necessities include a good functioning tape dispenser, an excellent stapler, a container for pens and pencils, a letter-opener, a container for paper clips, post-its, and the like, and a good pair of scissors.
- The more open space, the better you can do your work.
- Have a section for everything: sports, camping, crafts, lawn, etc. Each thing has a place.
- Store things so you can get to them without any trouble.
- Get rid of everything broken, obsolete, unused, and unusable.
- Throw out the boxes that things came in: you won’t use them again.
- Your home office should be confined to your home office, and should never infiltrate other areas of the house.
- Organization of papers and business cards is key.
- Simplicity is best. The less stuff you have, the better you can work.
- Students need to have orderly systems to get things and put things away.
- Students need to know where to turn in homework, get back graded work, and find out missing assignments due to absences. They can do all this on their own, and it will save you a lot of time and energy.
- Do a major de-clutter once a year. You’ll be surprised what you don’t need!