Merilyn Strange carefully applies her makeup, styles her hair
and dresses for work, lining up the angle of her name tag and
carefully affixing a trendy butterfly pin to her short-sleeved pink
sweater top.
Merilyn Strange carefully applies her makeup, styles her hair and dresses for work, lining up the angle of her name tag and carefully affixing a trendy butterfly pin to her short-sleeved pink sweater top.
She enjoys looking professional and, besides, it’s important to be put together if you’re going to be selling makeup to other women, she reasons.
Personal satisfaction isn’t the only reason Strange goes through this process every morning. Though she does feel it helps her sales, getting dressed and made up is a way for her to get her mind into work mode, just one tactic in the arsenal that keeps her full-time home business running smoothly.
But motivations like this, while helpful, do not account for all of Strange’s success. One of the greatest driving forces behind the Avon beauty adviser and training specialist’s rise has been her ability to organize.
Her office is part business center, part retail display room, with each section clearly divided from the next and plenty of clearly marked storage space.
The room isn’t large, but non-essential files are boxed, labeled and transferred to the garage for easy access, she said.
For home business owners, an organized office like Strange’s may seem, well, a bit strange.
Most home professionals work in sub-standard spaces – converted bedrooms, garages and kitchens with a distinct lack of cabinet, work and filing space – and the organizational challenges they create with all this havoc can affect their productivity according to Christy Best, a professional organizer based in the Santa Cruz mountains and who has 11 years of experience on the Central Coast. Bringing order to the chaos begins with one word, she said: Respect.
“The first common mistake people make in productively running a home business is that the home office doesn’t seem to get the same amount of respect that a regular office does,” said Best, who also operates the Web site www.Clutterbug.net. “There may not be any boundary set. Family members may be coming in and out of the room while you’re trying to get things done on the phone or there may not be any set work hours.”
These distractions can create immediate and decisive drops in productivity levels, according to Best, not to mention giving customers a poor impression of a business owner’s professionalism.
Best suggested setting not only hours, but ground rules for friends and family members who may share the space.
“It may be that you need to work with the door closed during certain hours of the day so family knows that you’re doing something important and don’t want to be disturbed, or you can leave a sign on the door so that they know you need some quiet,” said Best.
If your office needs more than a cosmetic fix – decent, usable office furniture coupled with some peace and quiet – put yourself through home office boot camp. Here’s how:
Report for duty
Many home business owners don’t set schedules for themselves, a formula for disaster, said Best.
Investing in a good day planner and creating a daily schedule, even if you can’t fill all of the hours in a business day yet, is the first step on the way to a productive office.
Strange, for instance, sticks to a work schedule, even if she never leaves the house.
She gets to work at a set time each morning, takes a lunch break in the afternoon and doesn’t leave the office until 6pm, just as she would at any other business.
“I have the freedom to block out the day if I want to take a day off, but I keep a schedule,” said Strange, who started off as an Avon sales representative and has grown her business to include not only sales, but training for other representatives.
She currently has nearly 130 recruits working under her.
“I take the experience seriously. This is a full-time job, and I treat it like one, but I’m my own boss. I report to myself.”
Form an attack plan
Strange has separated her office into small separate sections for training materials, sample kits, fragrances, color products and facial cremes and washes.
Beyond that, the sections are loosely organized by what fits in a given drawer, but she has a clearly marked place to look for anything she could need.
As long as the storage space works for the business owner, and could be relatively easily deciphered by a friend, relative or executor should something happen to them, it’s a system that can work, said Best.
“Piles of things on the floor is not a system,” said Best. “But people get scared when you start talking about organizing. They think it has to be color-coded and alphabetized and perfect. This doesn’t have to be the Dewey Decimal System, just one that works for you.”
Best advises business owners to consider the different types of paperwork that clutter their desks and crowd their file drawers.
Divide these into two categories: Personal and business records.
From there, owners can break each category down further and into as many as they think necessary.
Declutter!
Many professionals who work from home don’t file their work regularly, but letting even old work pile up can create a mountain of stress, according to Best.
“When you don’t know what’s there, it all looks like work,” said Best, who said physicians, attorneys and Ph.D.’s are among the worst organizers in her client roster. “If you keep it all in there and walk in in the morning, you go, ‘Oh my gosh! Look at all this work!’ It can completely stress you out before the day even begins. But if you look through that work, a lot of it is old stuff that is either done or doesn’t matter anymore.”
Best recommends regular purging of documents that are no longer necessary and moving those that must be kept but are not longer immediately relevant – like old client files, old finance documents and other data – to locations farther afield.
Strange stores items she doesn’t use every week in clearly marked boxes that are easily accessible in the home’s garage or spare closet, clearing her small office’s storage space in order to keep training materials, make-up samples and stock items within hand’s reach.
Stop wasting
So what if it’s cheaper to buy a crate of paper and 5,000 envelopes at Costco? If there’s nowhere to put those extra supplies, it’s just more bulk sitting around, said Best.
Ask for help
If you’re not sure whether to throw out paperwork, call a bank employee, financial professional or the appropriate government office and ask.
Most will be more than willing to sort out the issue.
When it comes to overwhelming mess, the answer is no different. If you’re uncomfortable with the prospect of organizing 10 years of files or tossing unnecessary documents, call in the cavalry.
A trusted friend or relative may be willing to help with the project, and if that is not an option, professional organizers can help.
Decluttering your life
Best offers free initial consultations and space plans, charging $390 for five hours of her services. The time frame is generally enough to get business owners started, said Best, and additional services, like regular organizer check-ups, are available. There’s even a workshop cruise of the Mexican Riviera, where vacationers can learn the art of decluttering their lives while enjoying a sun-drenched vacation, scheduled for next January. For more information, visit www.Clutterbug.net or call Best at (831) 643-1612.
