Organizing the Home Office, Part One: Paperwork and Filing
January is among my favorite months. January doesn't offer the golden promise of May, the orchard abundance of August, the apple-scented breezes of September, the spooky fun of October, but though sufferers through blizzards may disagree, there is something wonderful about January. January returns us home after a confetti-filled and champagne-fueled New Year's Eve. January draws us to the hearth to catch up on our mending, sends us to the gym to keep a New Year's resolution, sends some of us to the kitchen to bake ourselves a birthday cake (and reinforce the need to go to the gym). And it sends us to the home office, to get the business of keeping a home ready for the upcoming year.
No rule states that we have to organize the home office at the new year, but this is the ideal time to do it. Homekeeping is ongoing but it is also rhythmic, and dimensions of it are seasonal. Though we utilize and replenish the pantry regularly, we take serious stock of it during the harvest season. We revisit our holiday decorations as each holiday arrives, only to pack them away again all too soon. We switch closets according to the seasons, and seasonally set up for outdoor living. When we annually switch out our home office, we are putting the previous year to rest and setting up for the year to come. If that doesn't resonate with the new year, what does?
The home office functions well when it is modeled after the professional office while taking the specific needs of the home office into account. Professional offices succeed by creating and implementing process and procedure, and by then utilizing those ongoing and modifying them as needed. Effective office systems are self-perpetuating: as work gets done, systems support the work. Eventually, work and systems become symbiotic. While the applicable aspects of professional office systems work for the home office, it is understood that the two office environments don't translate laterally or entirely. One uses what is useful.
In twenty years where aside from writing I worked in a Fortune 500 corporation, eventually attaining the title of Executive Assistant, I learned that effectiveness depends on maximizing the resources of time, space, funds and effort. If that reads as office jargon, I apologize, but it is nonetheless true. At home as at work, with good office systems you will find yourself less distracted, less disorganized, less squeezed for time and more productive. Maintaining your home office will become a routine part of homekeeping, a process maintained ongoing rather than one nagging to be done and sometimes, being daunting or unsexy, going undone. It takes an investment of time and some funds to set up the home office and its processes, and it will take some effort to get used to. Once your home office is functioning smoothly, the effort of setting up and maintaining a home office will ultimately be an investment that pays off in perpetuity.
ORGANIZING THE HOME OFFICE, PART ONE: PAPERWORK AND FILING
As with all guides at Urban Home Blog, this is not meant to be a comprehensive list but one of suggestions based on my own experience as a lifestyle writer, homekeeper, and administrative professional. None of this is meant to replace or supersede professional direction or advice, including legal or actuarial. As always, none of these is a compensated endorsement.
Getting Started
Office administrators often refer to the week between Christmas and New Year's as Hell Week, a tongue-in-cheek term borrowed from debutante season when social activity is at a low point but there is a lot to be done in preparation for the upcoming season. During Hell Week, many offices schedule one, two or even three days where everyone gets their desk ready for the upcoming year. Recycling and shredding bins are ordered, files are gone through, new calendars placed on freshly dusted work surfaces.
Take your cue from Hell Week and set aside one to two days during winter break to set up your home office. You needn't be as literal as a business office would be -- you will have to break as other members or tasks of the household command your attention -- but do plan to dedicate the time. Office tasks have a way of being intimidating to initiate but easy to complete if you just get started. If we don't get started, we can fall into the pattern of hovering over the task without ever completing it. So reserve the time, and utilize it.
Just as you would at the office, plan on a work day. Remind family members who aren't drafted into service that it is a work day. Plan simple meals -- in our urban home, we set a pot of soup on the stovetop, along with coffee, cold water, and snacks. While you're working, place your note-taking media whether pen and paper or electronic within reach so you can jot down ideas and maintain a shopping list as ideas surface, which they will as you work. Some individuals require silence to work and some like a low electronic hum. In our urban home, we create an hours-long playlist in our online music library, and let it play on shuffle at low volume.
Paperwork -- Overview
Nothing accumulates like paperwork, so start there. Every professional office has record retention rules and practices, and this is an invaluable practice to adopt at home. Professionally, the rule for record-keeping on paper is typically "two in the drawer, three in the cabinet," meaning the current and previous year are considered live and kept in easily accessible desk files. The three years preceding the previous two are kept in files that are accessible and local but not immediate; typically, an on-site file bank. This equals five years of paper records within easy access. Everything earlier is either exempt and therefore retained, is destroyed, or is archived and shipped to central filing.
In the home, for most paper records, the two/three rule works well. Invest in a small lockable filing cabinet for current files, and in plastic file boxes with lockable lids for historic files (see below). Regarding the home desk, the old clunker from a junk shop is fine, but consider visiting the January sales to get a table that corresponds to the available space you have for a desk. As written about in the column about designing the home office, we use an inexpensive, customizable tabletop system that provides a nicely sized work surface while freeing the space below. The accompanying filing cabinet fits just exactly under the desk, and can easily be moved on its rollers.
Paperwork - Rules of Management
It is of benefit to both the environment and your household to reduce paper records wherever possible. As you can, convert household paper records to online scans or systems. Utilities are an easy way to get started by converting those to online billing and payment. As a rule, it is not necessary to keep more than one year's paid household bills on paper; shred everything older than that. For home-based business records, see below.
Exceptions include anything that impacts taxes, the mortgage or rental agreements, banking and investments, medical expenses, and legal records. For these areas, it may be necessary, mandatory, or just plain smart to retain records for five, seven, or ten years. For long-term records retention, utilize plastic filing boxes with lockable lids and file those records either by year or by subject matter as befits the situation. Use the computer's word-processing program to type in large font and print a one-page description of the contents of each box (example: 2013 Taxes / Federal, State, Local), and place the printout at the front of the box so that it is readable at a glance. Store the boxes with the content printout facing outward in a safe, secure, out of the way area such as closet, basement or attic, garage, or storage unit.
Paperwork - Organizing and Filing
Paperwork piles up fast. The initial step is to get in front of the task of organizing and filing. The only remaining step is ongoing: whatever system you put into place, maintain it so that paperwork doesn't get out of hand again. It sounds fussy but it really does work to set aside one time period a week -- Sunday morning works for us -- to go through and dispense with mail, desk papers, and anything else that has accumulated during the week. To that end, place a desk tray either on your desk or an entrance or hallway table and drop non-urgent paperwork there as it arrives during the week.
If you have considerable paperwork to go through, gather it together and take it to a surface large enough to accommodate it: your desk if the surface is uncluttered, or the dining room table. Bring stapler, paper clips, pen, writing pad, and index cards or sticky notes with you. Place a waste basket or cardboard box on the floor by the table. Take four notecards, pieces of paper, or sticky notes and write ACTION on one, FILE on the second, PENDING on the third, and SHRED on the fourth. Position the ACTION, FILE and PENDING signs side-by-side in a row on the work surface so that they resemble the top row of a calendar. Staple or tape the SHRED sign to the empty box on the floor. Be sure there is enough room for each category at your sorting station.
Go through the paperwork item by item, clipping or stapling related documents together as you go. Place each correspondingly into the categories of ACTION, FILE, and PENDING, and throw garbage in the SHRED box. As you sort, stack each item alternately horizontally and vertically to keep them separate and distinct from each other but still within their category. If anything is urgent, tag it or set it aside for urgent action. Don't bother about rummaging through the items you've already placed in the sorting station as you find additional related items. That will break up your rhythm which will jeopardize your efficiency. Just keep sorting, clipping and stapling, and stacking in alternate directions until you have gone through all of the paperwork. Then you will have three stacks to act upon, and a box of shredding. At that point, go through each pile to marry like items together and to place them, clipped together, in order of importance, urgent on top. If helpful, clip an index card or attach a sticky note on each ACTION and PENDING item detailing what needs to happen and important dates such as deadlines.
As you act on each ACTION or PENDING item, create a file folder for it. Place a cheat sheet in each folder with pertinent information (example: coded log-in/password information, details of telephone conversations including date and time, names and contact information, etc.). The goal is that whenever you open the file, everything you will need to know will be evident.
For household filing, simple is smart. Follow the two/three retention rule (see above) and organize current files (for exceptions, see below) in one place in straightforward alphabetical order. For all files, make and affix a label to the top tab of the file folder and across the top front of the folder, so that you can identify the subject of the file folder whether it is filed upright or lying flat. Make sure to do the FILING as part of your weekly office time. This is not only so that filing doesn't accumulate, it is so that you know, at a glance, that anything that is lying out is current or pending, meaning it requires ACTION.
Filing - Special Circumstances
Confidential, sensitive, or complex files require special handling. For these, utilize flap closure expanding wallets, often referred to in offices as redwells. Place all pertinent files inside of the redwell, and label both the outside flap and the inside front wall with the contents (example, 2014 Business Expenses).
It is especially important to keep good medical files. Create one redwell per year per member of the family including pets, labeled correspondingly (example: 2016 Medical / Eric and 2016 Medical / John). File everything pertinent in labeled file folders inside the redwell, such as insurance information, a medical checklist of information anyone providing care should know, paper records or instructions from office visits or medical procedures, printouts from medication, health care pamphlets and articles, etc. Use the computer's word processing or spreadsheet program to create a master list of medical providers, including physicians (with nurse and office contact info), dentist, pharmacy, veterinarian, and related healthcare services such as physical therapy. Keep the list updated real time, and keep a copy of the current list in everyone's medical file.
In our household, we organize personal income taxes as part of a household financials file box created and maintained annually. Obtain a receipt for every expenditure during the year and timely file the receipts in straight cut filing pockets labeled according to area of expenditure (example: Groceries, Healthcare, Automotive, etc.) as applies to your household. This system organizes and stores household expenditures into a central file back to which many other files in the household track. For example, healthcare expenses link to healthcare files (see above), but because expenses are separate from actions, there will be no doubling back, second-guessing, or other inefficiencies that contribute to stress at tax time. A household financials file makes it easy to track and maintain a budget, manage investments, and to organize and document income tax filings. Once the household taxes are completed and submitted, place those copies in the financials file to close out that year. Store the household financial file boxes, labeled and shelved historically, in a safe place.
If you run a business out of your home, consult with your accountant and attorney regarding which files to keep onsite. Follow the protocol of organizing and retaining files as directed by legal advisement, accounting rules, and governmental and professional rules and regulations. As with all files, business files should be impeccable, elements of which include being current, correct, complete, and truthful. Keep business files as if one day their contents will be examined, a practice known in offices as discoverability.
Crucial household records such as mortgage or lease should be stored in a strong box (see below). Records for the household file include insurance records including a household inventory with special attention paid to high-value items, electronics instructions and warranties, furniture assembly and -care instructions, and blueprints and systems schematics such as HVAC and plumbing.
For vital records such as birth, marriage and death records, ID documents, mortgages and titles, etc., get a fire-safe strong box and keep those papers in the strong box. Annually review, file, and update such vital documents as advance directives, wills, etc., and keep copies of those filed documents in the strong box. Scan all vital records and copy the scans identically to two flash drives. Store one drive in the strong box, and give one drive to a trusted relative, friend, or your attorney for safekeeping along with the spare key to the strong box, and advise them where the strong box is located in your home.
Finally, pay attention to communications from your municipality regarding electronic and paper waste management events. At these, not only can you bring outdated electronics such as older computers and printers for repurposing among civic organizations, but you can also often do your shredding. And, just like at an office water cooler, you will get to socialize with your neighbors!
In Organizing the Home Office, we will discuss the details of household business, such as budgets, calendars, correspondence, and home office equipment.
Office Day Menu
Lentil Soup
Tuna Salad
Dilled Cheese Bread
Brownies
Resources
Designing the Home Office
No rule states that we have to organize the home office at the new year, but this is the ideal time to do it. Homekeeping is ongoing but it is also rhythmic, and dimensions of it are seasonal. Though we utilize and replenish the pantry regularly, we take serious stock of it during the harvest season. We revisit our holiday decorations as each holiday arrives, only to pack them away again all too soon. We switch closets according to the seasons, and seasonally set up for outdoor living. When we annually switch out our home office, we are putting the previous year to rest and setting up for the year to come. If that doesn't resonate with the new year, what does?
The home office functions well when it is modeled after the professional office while taking the specific needs of the home office into account. Professional offices succeed by creating and implementing process and procedure, and by then utilizing those ongoing and modifying them as needed. Effective office systems are self-perpetuating: as work gets done, systems support the work. Eventually, work and systems become symbiotic. While the applicable aspects of professional office systems work for the home office, it is understood that the two office environments don't translate laterally or entirely. One uses what is useful.
In twenty years where aside from writing I worked in a Fortune 500 corporation, eventually attaining the title of Executive Assistant, I learned that effectiveness depends on maximizing the resources of time, space, funds and effort. If that reads as office jargon, I apologize, but it is nonetheless true. At home as at work, with good office systems you will find yourself less distracted, less disorganized, less squeezed for time and more productive. Maintaining your home office will become a routine part of homekeeping, a process maintained ongoing rather than one nagging to be done and sometimes, being daunting or unsexy, going undone. It takes an investment of time and some funds to set up the home office and its processes, and it will take some effort to get used to. Once your home office is functioning smoothly, the effort of setting up and maintaining a home office will ultimately be an investment that pays off in perpetuity.
ORGANIZING THE HOME OFFICE, PART ONE: PAPERWORK AND FILING
As with all guides at Urban Home Blog, this is not meant to be a comprehensive list but one of suggestions based on my own experience as a lifestyle writer, homekeeper, and administrative professional. None of this is meant to replace or supersede professional direction or advice, including legal or actuarial. As always, none of these is a compensated endorsement.
Getting Started
Office administrators often refer to the week between Christmas and New Year's as Hell Week, a tongue-in-cheek term borrowed from debutante season when social activity is at a low point but there is a lot to be done in preparation for the upcoming season. During Hell Week, many offices schedule one, two or even three days where everyone gets their desk ready for the upcoming year. Recycling and shredding bins are ordered, files are gone through, new calendars placed on freshly dusted work surfaces.
Take your cue from Hell Week and set aside one to two days during winter break to set up your home office. You needn't be as literal as a business office would be -- you will have to break as other members or tasks of the household command your attention -- but do plan to dedicate the time. Office tasks have a way of being intimidating to initiate but easy to complete if you just get started. If we don't get started, we can fall into the pattern of hovering over the task without ever completing it. So reserve the time, and utilize it.
Just as you would at the office, plan on a work day. Remind family members who aren't drafted into service that it is a work day. Plan simple meals -- in our urban home, we set a pot of soup on the stovetop, along with coffee, cold water, and snacks. While you're working, place your note-taking media whether pen and paper or electronic within reach so you can jot down ideas and maintain a shopping list as ideas surface, which they will as you work. Some individuals require silence to work and some like a low electronic hum. In our urban home, we create an hours-long playlist in our online music library, and let it play on shuffle at low volume.
Paperwork -- Overview
Nothing accumulates like paperwork, so start there. Every professional office has record retention rules and practices, and this is an invaluable practice to adopt at home. Professionally, the rule for record-keeping on paper is typically "two in the drawer, three in the cabinet," meaning the current and previous year are considered live and kept in easily accessible desk files. The three years preceding the previous two are kept in files that are accessible and local but not immediate; typically, an on-site file bank. This equals five years of paper records within easy access. Everything earlier is either exempt and therefore retained, is destroyed, or is archived and shipped to central filing.
In the home, for most paper records, the two/three rule works well. Invest in a small lockable filing cabinet for current files, and in plastic file boxes with lockable lids for historic files (see below). Regarding the home desk, the old clunker from a junk shop is fine, but consider visiting the January sales to get a table that corresponds to the available space you have for a desk. As written about in the column about designing the home office, we use an inexpensive, customizable tabletop system that provides a nicely sized work surface while freeing the space below. The accompanying filing cabinet fits just exactly under the desk, and can easily be moved on its rollers.
Paperwork - Rules of Management
It is of benefit to both the environment and your household to reduce paper records wherever possible. As you can, convert household paper records to online scans or systems. Utilities are an easy way to get started by converting those to online billing and payment. As a rule, it is not necessary to keep more than one year's paid household bills on paper; shred everything older than that. For home-based business records, see below.
Exceptions include anything that impacts taxes, the mortgage or rental agreements, banking and investments, medical expenses, and legal records. For these areas, it may be necessary, mandatory, or just plain smart to retain records for five, seven, or ten years. For long-term records retention, utilize plastic filing boxes with lockable lids and file those records either by year or by subject matter as befits the situation. Use the computer's word-processing program to type in large font and print a one-page description of the contents of each box (example: 2013 Taxes / Federal, State, Local), and place the printout at the front of the box so that it is readable at a glance. Store the boxes with the content printout facing outward in a safe, secure, out of the way area such as closet, basement or attic, garage, or storage unit.
Paperwork - Organizing and Filing
Paperwork piles up fast. The initial step is to get in front of the task of organizing and filing. The only remaining step is ongoing: whatever system you put into place, maintain it so that paperwork doesn't get out of hand again. It sounds fussy but it really does work to set aside one time period a week -- Sunday morning works for us -- to go through and dispense with mail, desk papers, and anything else that has accumulated during the week. To that end, place a desk tray either on your desk or an entrance or hallway table and drop non-urgent paperwork there as it arrives during the week.
If you have considerable paperwork to go through, gather it together and take it to a surface large enough to accommodate it: your desk if the surface is uncluttered, or the dining room table. Bring stapler, paper clips, pen, writing pad, and index cards or sticky notes with you. Place a waste basket or cardboard box on the floor by the table. Take four notecards, pieces of paper, or sticky notes and write ACTION on one, FILE on the second, PENDING on the third, and SHRED on the fourth. Position the ACTION, FILE and PENDING signs side-by-side in a row on the work surface so that they resemble the top row of a calendar. Staple or tape the SHRED sign to the empty box on the floor. Be sure there is enough room for each category at your sorting station.
Go through the paperwork item by item, clipping or stapling related documents together as you go. Place each correspondingly into the categories of ACTION, FILE, and PENDING, and throw garbage in the SHRED box. As you sort, stack each item alternately horizontally and vertically to keep them separate and distinct from each other but still within their category. If anything is urgent, tag it or set it aside for urgent action. Don't bother about rummaging through the items you've already placed in the sorting station as you find additional related items. That will break up your rhythm which will jeopardize your efficiency. Just keep sorting, clipping and stapling, and stacking in alternate directions until you have gone through all of the paperwork. Then you will have three stacks to act upon, and a box of shredding. At that point, go through each pile to marry like items together and to place them, clipped together, in order of importance, urgent on top. If helpful, clip an index card or attach a sticky note on each ACTION and PENDING item detailing what needs to happen and important dates such as deadlines.
As you act on each ACTION or PENDING item, create a file folder for it. Place a cheat sheet in each folder with pertinent information (example: coded log-in/password information, details of telephone conversations including date and time, names and contact information, etc.). The goal is that whenever you open the file, everything you will need to know will be evident.
For household filing, simple is smart. Follow the two/three retention rule (see above) and organize current files (for exceptions, see below) in one place in straightforward alphabetical order. For all files, make and affix a label to the top tab of the file folder and across the top front of the folder, so that you can identify the subject of the file folder whether it is filed upright or lying flat. Make sure to do the FILING as part of your weekly office time. This is not only so that filing doesn't accumulate, it is so that you know, at a glance, that anything that is lying out is current or pending, meaning it requires ACTION.
Filing - Special Circumstances
Confidential, sensitive, or complex files require special handling. For these, utilize flap closure expanding wallets, often referred to in offices as redwells. Place all pertinent files inside of the redwell, and label both the outside flap and the inside front wall with the contents (example, 2014 Business Expenses).
It is especially important to keep good medical files. Create one redwell per year per member of the family including pets, labeled correspondingly (example: 2016 Medical / Eric and 2016 Medical / John). File everything pertinent in labeled file folders inside the redwell, such as insurance information, a medical checklist of information anyone providing care should know, paper records or instructions from office visits or medical procedures, printouts from medication, health care pamphlets and articles, etc. Use the computer's word processing or spreadsheet program to create a master list of medical providers, including physicians (with nurse and office contact info), dentist, pharmacy, veterinarian, and related healthcare services such as physical therapy. Keep the list updated real time, and keep a copy of the current list in everyone's medical file.
In our household, we organize personal income taxes as part of a household financials file box created and maintained annually. Obtain a receipt for every expenditure during the year and timely file the receipts in straight cut filing pockets labeled according to area of expenditure (example: Groceries, Healthcare, Automotive, etc.) as applies to your household. This system organizes and stores household expenditures into a central file back to which many other files in the household track. For example, healthcare expenses link to healthcare files (see above), but because expenses are separate from actions, there will be no doubling back, second-guessing, or other inefficiencies that contribute to stress at tax time. A household financials file makes it easy to track and maintain a budget, manage investments, and to organize and document income tax filings. Once the household taxes are completed and submitted, place those copies in the financials file to close out that year. Store the household financial file boxes, labeled and shelved historically, in a safe place.
If you run a business out of your home, consult with your accountant and attorney regarding which files to keep onsite. Follow the protocol of organizing and retaining files as directed by legal advisement, accounting rules, and governmental and professional rules and regulations. As with all files, business files should be impeccable, elements of which include being current, correct, complete, and truthful. Keep business files as if one day their contents will be examined, a practice known in offices as discoverability.
Crucial household records such as mortgage or lease should be stored in a strong box (see below). Records for the household file include insurance records including a household inventory with special attention paid to high-value items, electronics instructions and warranties, furniture assembly and -care instructions, and blueprints and systems schematics such as HVAC and plumbing.
For vital records such as birth, marriage and death records, ID documents, mortgages and titles, etc., get a fire-safe strong box and keep those papers in the strong box. Annually review, file, and update such vital documents as advance directives, wills, etc., and keep copies of those filed documents in the strong box. Scan all vital records and copy the scans identically to two flash drives. Store one drive in the strong box, and give one drive to a trusted relative, friend, or your attorney for safekeeping along with the spare key to the strong box, and advise them where the strong box is located in your home.
Finally, pay attention to communications from your municipality regarding electronic and paper waste management events. At these, not only can you bring outdated electronics such as older computers and printers for repurposing among civic organizations, but you can also often do your shredding. And, just like at an office water cooler, you will get to socialize with your neighbors!
In Organizing the Home Office, we will discuss the details of household business, such as budgets, calendars, correspondence, and home office equipment.
Office Day Menu
Lentil Soup
Tuna Salad
Dilled Cheese Bread
Brownies
Resources
Designing the Home Office
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