My biggest organizing challenge is this: I have two offices, one at home and one at work. I find it very difficult to keep things organized between the two. I try to do different things at each, but there is overlap and often confusion.
With more and more people working from home rather than commuting to an office everyday, maintaining two offices is not uncommon. Here are some suggestions to help keep the confusion to a minimum:
- Determine which activities will be performed in each office. For example, you might use your office at work for meetings, phone calls, quick e-mails and some standard paperwork while your home office may be used for writing, doing research or other activities that require more time or a quiet place to focus. Set up your space specifically for those activities.
- In your home office, keep your personal documents separate from work items otherwise these can get muddled when you are trying to focus on one or the other.
- If you have two computers, one at home and one at work, set up an online server for your files, calendar and e-mail system so you can access your electronic information from both offices.
- Computer files are more portable than paper files so scan any documents you think you might need to reference rather than trying to move paper files back and forth.
