Staying Organized When You Work From Home

Staying Organized When You Work Out of Your Home 

Remote work opportunities have grown massively in the last two years. Studies by Gartner have forecasted that 32% of employees worldwide would be remote by the end of 2021, which is up from 17% of employees in 2019. This change has caused everyone to learn and adjust to this new normal in many ways, especially learning how to be organized when working from home. 

Although organization may not be at the top of the list for most working from home, it can be the key to a healthy work-life balance. It is even more essential that you learn to stay organized when you work out of your home to live a happier fuller life, both personally and professionally. 

Create a Dedicated Work Space

One way to start prioritizing organization while working remotely is to create a dedicated workspace. This workspace should be separate from where you sleep, eat, or do other major parts of your normal, non-work life. 

If you live with other people, you should find a way to work privately if at all possible. According to a survey by CraftJack, 37% of people work from home in the same room as another member of their household. Among those people, 69% of those people say they are regularly disrupted by the other person. 

In addition, among those surveyed who work from home alongside a significant other, 58% say that the experience has, at some point, been a point of stress or strain on their relationship. 

Setting up Your Work Space

There are several parts of your workspace setup that you should consider to successfully work from home.  For instance, finding the right desk to work from is incredibly important because it is foundational to creating your system of organization as well as being comfortable. To select the correct desk for your workspace, there are a few things you must consider. 

First, consider what height is correct for you to sit comfortably with proper posture. During this evaluation, you can also weigh out the benefits of standing desks. 

You should also factor in your need for a supportive and comfortable chair. It is important to remember how much time you will be spending in this chair, so factoring in things such as height, lumbar support, and breathability are important. 

Determine an Organizational Scheme

Once you have the essentials for your workplace setup, you must determine an organizational scheme that works best for you. Fortunately, there are several different ones for you to choose from when doing so. 

Color-Coding: Color-coded organization can be a great way to sort items into several large categories then quickly reference them and know immediately which category they belong in. For instance, if you spend most of your time split among a few specific clients or projects, labeling each project or client with a specific color may help you differentiate your work more easily.

Alphabetizing: This scheme is exceptionally useful due to its universality and how easily it can be applied to additional organizational themes. For instance, you may sort out different projects into color-coded sections, but within these sections, your paperwork could be sorted alphabetically. 

Barcodes: If your at-home business has a large amount of inventory, then barcodes can be an exceptionally useful organizational tool. By using barcodes on inventory like this you can quickly categorize and maintain a count of your inventory as you receive, process, and fulfill orders being made and going out your door. 

Labels: Lastly, you can choose labels to help you with your organizing. By doing this you can quickly scan and read where everything is, and reprint labels that you use routinely.

Product 

If your work involves product inventory, there is plenty of need for a variety of organizational schemes. To easily identify, analyze, and process product inventory, you can use barcodes and labels. Utilizing the various organizational themes just mentioned to keep your product organized will help you run your business much more smoothly and efficiently. 

For example, using color-coded labels to differentiate different categories of products in your inventory is a great way to quickly look at your inventory as a whole and know immediately what your overall stock of each category looks like at any given moment. You can take these even one step further and make sure to have a uniform format for your product descriptions and then alphabetize your products based on that description. 

Paperwork

In addition, if your work relies on hard copies of paperwork, you must have systems or organizational schemes available for you to quickly find and reference important files. One way of doing this is to organize your paperwork by date so that your most recent files are easily accessible. This system of organization streamlines the process of important tasks such as your business’ taxes. 

It is also important to utilize whatever technology you have available to aid in your at-home business’ organization. One example of this is by uploading any digital documents you have to an online cloud and digitizing any physical paper documents you have. 

Give Everything a Designated Place

When organizing your new at-home workspace, find ways to create dedicated spaces for all items to exist and stay separate from everything else. Doing this can help increase your productivity across the board in several ways. By creating designated spaces for your working items, you are much less likely to mix things up or accidentally create organizational mistakes that lead to larger headaches down the road. 

• Inventory: Storage shelves or containers that you can easily label can go a long way toward keeping your inventory organized.  
• Paperwork: Utilize dedicated paper trays for anything that is actively needed, such as invoices or product orders still to-be-filled. In addition, keep well-organized filing cabinets handy for anything non-active paperwork that is still necessary for storage.  
• Office supplies: Extra supplies like printer paper, writing utensils, or post-it notes should be kept together somewhere like a storage closet so that they are easily accessible if needed but out of your way. 

Invest in the Right Tools

If you operate your business from home, you still need some of the same tools as traditional businesses do. This is especially true if your business handles the inventory and shipping of products. Depending on the scale to which your business is operating, several tools will aid you in properly managing your inventory and fulfilling orders. 

These items include:

• Barcode printers: Help streamline your inventory and shipping processes by printing asset labels, inventory labels, shipping labels, and other label needs.
• Printing supplies: Whether your business requires label printing, inkjet printing, laser printing, or 3D printing, there are various supplies you will need at some point along the way, such as labels, ink and toner, 3D printer filament, and more.
• Barcode labels: Regardless of whether you need shipping labels, asset labels, or inventory labels, you must have the correct type of labels for your printer so that your process never gets slowed down due to a lack of the correct supplies.
• Scanners: Depending on the scale and specific needs of your at-home business, there are several types of barcode scanners that can help you track inventory, create labels, and fulfill orders.
• Zebra tools: if you are looking to fully streamline your process end-to-end, it might be worth it for you to look at a brand and series of products that will cover everything the way Zebra does.

While acquiring supplies and tools, it is also important that you understand how to handle tax deductions for each of these items for your business to make sure you achieve your maximum savings without getting yourself in hot water.

Communicate With Others in Your Household

If you live with others, whether that be roommates, a significant other, children, or other family members, boundaries must be set up so that your housemates do not become a detriment to your professional life. Some of these boundaries may include actions like:

• Establishing what your work hours are
• Setting limitations on what might constitute an understandable reason to interrupt work (i.e. emergencies, a child legitimately needing something from you, or medical situations)
• Presenting reasonable expectations of noise levels being made near your workspace

While this level of privacy may not be as completely possible if you have children as compared to living with roommates, it is still just as important to establish these boundaries so that you can still get work done without unnecessary distractions. 

Follow All Safety Protocols 

Depending on the type of business you are operating from your home, you may be subject to different safety requirements than a traditional business of the same type. Fortunately, staying organized in these ways will also help you achieve these safety needs. 

One way you can do this is by ensuring you have all of your necessary first aid and fire hazard supplies organized and stored in a readily-accessible place in your home with clear labeling and instructions for each item. This way, in the case of an emergency you are prepared ahead of time and can easily follow proper procedure for the situation without having to process extra information. 

Similarly, creating a clear and easily read file with these emergency plans and procedures can make reacting to these emergencies significantly less stressful should they arise. By making sure that you and your home business are organized beforehand, you are setting yourself up for greatly increased success and far fewer headaches to deal with that get in the way of you and your business reaching your professional goals.