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I pride myself on being organised. It’s one of my best qualities. I’m not trying to toot my own horn – heck I RARELY compliment myself – but my organisational skills are top notch. I work from home and I’m self employed, so staying organised is of a super high importance to me. If I’m not organised, then my working day would be absolute mayhem.
Photo by Tanya Trukyr on Unsplash
Working in an office, I guess you have organisational methods and systems already in place. Filing cabinets and folders from the way the company have always organised things. It’s just up to you to learn those techniques and carry them on. But when you work from home, it’s alllll up to you baby!
I firmly believe that staying organised helps you stay productive and lowers stress levels too. I know from experience that if I’m having a day where I’m feeling particularly un-organised (which is rare), my head is ALL OVER THE PLACE and I feel like a computer screen with 16 different tabs open.
So today I’m going to share some super easy ways you can stay productive when working from home. Whether you work from home permanently or on the odd occasion, these tips can easily be implemented into your life!
Try and get into a routine
Although not directly related to organisation, more so to productivity but I feel like the two go hand in hand. And a routine is a big part of that. I won’t suggest a routine for you to try because it’s important to remember that different things work for different people. But try and find a routine that works for YOU and do your best to stick to it!
Store everything properly
So the other week I was looking for one of my tax books from a previous tax year. I’m SUPER organised, as you well know already so I was horrified that I couldn’t find it. How could I be SO CARELESS with something SO IMPORTANT. Oh, what’s worse, is that this book contained my log in details for HMRC *internally cries*.
We finally found it. It was in the shed. I don’t know why it was in the shed but it was in the shed. Among a load of other old rubbish, photographs and nick nacks. Not the ideal place to “store” important documents. So if you work from home or work for yourself, a good storage system is VITAL for organisation.
If you’re looking for good quality storage for all those old files, folders and important business related documents that you really don’t want to misplace, Magenta Storage have a perfect packing shop with all sized boxes you’ll need to keep mega organised.
Keep a dedicated office / work space
This is one point that I really need to take my own advice on but sadly it hasn’t been possible for me to have a dedicated work space at home because there isn’t the room! BUT if you do have the option, find a dedicated work space and make it your own. Whether that’s a spare room or a garden office. It’ll be much easier to stay organised if you’re keeping your work stuff and life stuff separate.
De-clutter regularly
I’m a huge advocate for de-cluttering. I hate clutter. Hate, hate, hate it. And I honestly feel like my mind is more cluttered when I have more physical clutter around me. Psychology, eh? So of course it’s important to de-clutter your kitchen cupboards and your wardrobe regularly but don’t forget your work space too. Your desk, your files and even your laptop and digital devices!
Lists, notebooks and spreadsheets
Yay, lists! My favorite thing EVER. Not a day goes by without me working from a to-do list and I believe they help massively with organisation. Notebooks are great to stay organised too as you can dedicate a different notebook to a different area of your work. And spreadsheets, well… who doesn’t love a spreadsheet?
Stop multitasking
Again another point that will help with both organisation and productivity and that’s stop multitasking. Stop it. Seriously. This is something I’ve been working tirelessly on for years, being of a certain go-go-go nature. But why would you want to half ass 3 jobs when you could do 1 properly? Think about it.
Take breaks regularly (especially if you’re always sitting down!)
And finally a point to help you keep up the momentum. Because working from home… there’s a lot of distractions. And temptations. The fridge. The dog. The PlayStation. So it’ important to take those breaks, as you would working in an office and not push through until you drop.
How do you stay organised when you work from home? Have you implemented any of these tips or have any organisational hacks to share yourself? Let me know!
