Making Your Home Office a Real Office

By Carol Johnson

For the growing number of people who are working at home, it may be easy to bring home the work, but harder to bring home the discipline and organization of the office. But taking the time to organize things and stick to a schedule may make or break your success as a home-based worker.

First, in order to have a productive home office, be sure that it is in fact an office—not a corner of the family room, a nook in the kitchen, or a table beside the bedroom window. A home office should be the same as a corporate office in that it should be a permanently dedicated place where you can have peace and quiet and plenty of room to work and stay organized. If you don’t take pains to establish a permanent space for your office, then you’ll be continually moving things around, which means you’ll risk losing important papers or scattering things all over the house.

Once you’ve established your office space, be sure to set household parameters regarding who else can use the space (such as letting children use your work computer or reference books) as well as outlining times during which you need to be left alone to get things done. Home-based workers are easily distracted by visits or personal phone calls from people who think "home-based" means you’re just at home. Be firm in letting people know that just because you’re home doesn’t mean you aren’t also at work.

Invest in the best office equipment you can afford. Spend that extra money to get a fast enough and powerful enough computer to handle everything you’re going to need it for at home. If your home work will involve delivering printed materials to clients, be sure to invest in a top-quality printer. A client’s impression of your work will suffer if the copy you deliver to them is done on a cheap printer. By the same token, invest in good quality paper.

Have a dedicated business telephone line, and don’t use it for personal calls. It will not look professional to clients to have your spouse or children answer a business phone. Invest in a good voice-mail system or a high-quality answering machine that sounds professional. If you don’t want callers to know your office is in your home, be sure that your answering machine and message sound the same as a voicemail system in an office would sound.

On your dedicated business line, don’t ever have call waiting. You can set up a voicemail system with your phone company to save a message if your line is busy when someone calls, but interrupting one phone call to speak with someone else is not only rude, it could cost you a client’s business if they feel you are not devoting enough attention to their needs.

Always keep a pad of paper by your business telephone so you are able to quickly jot down information a client gives you, or make notes to yourself while listening to a client’s feedback about your work. Be sure you always have more than one working pen on your desk in case one gives out while you’re writing.

Organize, organize, organize. Get a good file cabinet and devote it solely to business. Set up file folders logically according to project or client. You may want to also set up folders for notes about meetings or telephone calls, ideas or articles you’ve saved, and receipts related to your business. Make it a point to go through your folders at least once a month and get rid of any paperwork you haven’t used or won’t ever use, to keep your file folders from getting crammed to overflowing.

Unless your workspace is also going to be used for personal paperwork such as paying bills, don’t put the mail down on your desk or bills may get lost amid your work papers. Don’t let paperwork pile up on your desk. A good habit to get into is dealing with a piece of mail right away when you open it—either file it, address the issue it raises, or trash it. If it’s something you don’t have time to do right then, put it in a tray on your desk that is specifically for time-sensitive tasks. Then go through that tray at least once a day, when you have time to take care of the papers it contains.

One of the most important things to remember about having a home office is to realize your limits and your strengths. Some people think that they have to work harder at home than they would at an office, in order to prove to people that they aren’t just slacking off by being at home. But if you spend too much time striving for perfection and trying to convince other people that you really are working as hard at home as you would at an office, your work will suffer as a result.

Often working from home results in being able to get even more accomplished than you would if you were driving to an office building each day. If you keep organized, discipline yourself to stick to a schedule, and deliver completed projects as promised and when promised, your work will speak for itself.