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Home Office Decorating Secrets
Home offices can accommodate as much office equipment as larger offices, with more comfort and personality. Natural lighting in a home office provides a connection to the outdoors. Figuring out the balance with natural and artificial light in your home office is discussed. Task lighting and ambient lighting are noted, as are dimmers and gooseneck lamps. Also mentions the benefits of a filing cabinet and bookcases. Mentions desks that close when work is done is a décor solution to keep home offices free of clutter.
Eight Home Office Tips
This CNN site takes a chapter from Lisa Kanarek's Home Office Life to help those working at home to choose the proper room for their home office and then to set up their home office in both an efficient manner and in such a way that it impinges on the rest of the home as little as possible. Tips include such things as carefully evaluating each and every space in your home to determine the best place for your home office, even if your office is already set up; there could be a better place. When making your choice there are many considerations such as determining if you will actually use the space, then there are questions of lighting, distractions, number of electrical outlets, ease of arranging file cabinets and equipment as well as questions of home traffic patterns. Other tips include buying comfortable chairs and other furniture, using a scanner to scan paperwork into the computer so the paperwork itself can be discarded, eliminating the need for paper files as much as possible. For the person working at home, this article contains a great deal of information, some of it common sense and some of it not so obvious, but all of it valuable.
Trimming Paper Clutter
If your home office is a wreck, follow these easy-to-read tips that should help you cut down on paper clutter. Site explains filing categories you can use for bills, receipts, copies, errands, and calls. Includes information about how to decide which papers need to be thrown out. If your mailbox is filled with catalogs that you don't order fromor don't want to be tempted to order from in the futureyou can request that they not be mailed to you. Write to the address below and ask them to take your name off their direct mail list. You'll prevent clutter from the catalogs themselves, as well as from all the things that you don't buy because you never knew you needed them.
Organizing Your Paperwork
Your home office can be anything from a desk where you pay bills to a separate room in your house from which you run a multimillion-dollar enterprise. Regardless of the size and complexity of your home office, every home office has one thing in common: keeping organized. Organization starts with a workable filing system. This site recommends a filing cabinet large enough to accommodate the size of your business. Start by labeling the drawers of your filing cabinet. One drawer might be labeled BILLS, another DOCUMENTS, and one might even be labeled MISCELLANEOUS. Label each folder as specifically as possible. This article suggests some of the following labels to help make your continuing organizing and up-dating of your paperwork easier: UNPAID BILLS, and then a separate file for each of your major bills as they are paid, such as Telephone, Utilities, credit cards, etc. If possible have a separate drawer for DOCUMENTS or IMPORTANT PAPERS such as your mortgage or lease contract and other important papers for your home, medical insurance, warranties, auto loan papers, bank statements and the like. There are even suggestions for way to make your own unique and colorful "filing cabinets" if you can't afford or don't want the real thing. Organizing paperwork is the biggest problem many home officer owners report, so any help you can get in that area should be taken advantage of. This is one site you definitely need to take advantage of.
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