Whether you work from home or not you will still need to organize your office area, be it just a desk to pay your accounts, a computer table or it may be a large space.

You will find some quick and easy tips to organize your office area from a veteran work at home homeschooling mom!

Table Top Blitz

Assess your space

Where do you pay accounts? Write out lesson plans? Do your filing?

Is this area surrounded in chaos and piles of paper?

Do you have enough space or are you spreading into space you don’t truly need?

Sort through piles

I have a consistent pile on my right hand section of my table that I sort through weekly. My weekly job with this pile is to clear it off. I do this by making piles in the following three catagories:

Rubbish

Filing

To Do

My To Do pile has two sections:

Attend to right away or file for payment.

Toss the rubbish

Homeschool moms, like me, always receive articles and newsletters that we want to read. Sometimes I even print them out, read them then put them in my pile. Some are “keepers” others are once-off reads. So I toss them and anything else that is not necessary to keep.

Get into the habit of attending to your mail the moment it arrives. Toss the adverts, keep the letters and accounts.

File the keepers

I have a very simplistic filing system – some may frown at it but it works, and my accountant husband approves - and it goes a long way to help organize your office!

All incoming accounts are opened and placed into a folder for payment on our payday.

All paid accounts go into a oversized shoebox under my desk.

Any other information that I need to keep for tax, like bank statements etc, are also added to the shoebox.

This shoebox is then emptied and sorted when we begin our annual tax return. All the tax papers are stapled together in groups and the other paper is sorted into two piles – keep and throwaway.

The papers to keep are then left in a shoebox if necessary or in a smaller padded envelope with the year on the front. These are then stored with our past seven years filing in a box.

After 7 years (check for your country's requirement) we destroy all documents no longer needed.

Pay the accounts

Now you have assessed your area, sorted through your piles, thrown away your rubbish and you need only pay your accounts that are ready and waiting for payday.

And the next time the post man calls…sort through your mail immediately!

Computer

Most of us have a computer on our desks. Homeschooling families tend to belong to chat-groups and forums, receive E-zines and have many favorite websites. This too needs to be looked at when taking time to organize your office area.

Here are my quick and easy tips to keep the cyber space under control:

Organize your internet favorites into folders like forums, curricula, fun stuff, parenting etc.

Handle your email folders the same way.

Deal with your emails ONCE! As it comes in read it and either answer it, file it or delete it. Deleted email folders need to be sorted through monthly and anything that is no longer needed deleted permanently.

Resist the temptation to check emails or forums when you should be cooking, teaching or homemaking – they tend to suck you in!

Other pages you may be interested in are:

Organize your kitchen
Organize your living areas
House Cleaning Tips
Organize your homeschool
Getting organized with laundry
Earning an income while homeschooling
Homeschooling mom's can earn an income - yes you too!

For extra help and some ideas that really work...you can sign up for a series of organizational tips to help you take some steps to becomming a more organized mom! Sign up below.

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