Creating Workspace Boundaries

An important step towards organizing your business is creating boundaries where your workspace is concerned.

Have you ever looked at a person's office or work space to see nothing but chaos? Well, for a home business owner, it's easy to get unorganized if you do not establish boundaries. You can easily cross those boundaries and mix home/family life items and documents with business documents.

To effectively create your workspace boundaries, it would be ideal to have a home office. However, everyone is not blessed with that kind of space. Some of us running a home business live in an apartment and the workspace is not much more than a corning in the living room with a computer hutch. Even still, you can set workspace boundaries by doing 5 simple things:

• Keep your computer that you use for your home business separate from the computer that the rest of the family uses. You should not be sharing a computer. If you are serious about creating workspace boundaries, when others ask to use the computer you use for your home business, you'll be wise to send them to the library or a friend's.
  
• Have a separate filing cabinet for your home business documents. You should not have your birth certificate and kid's social security cards in the same filing space
• Spend time each day clearing away clutter. Instead of using post it notes to jot down thoughts and ideas, use a notebook where you can keep it all in one place
• Set a schedule and create a to do list for each day of the week to work your home based business and stick to it. If you don't complete every task, that's ok. Start your tasks based on priority
• Use a separate phone line from your home phone line. There's nothing like being in the middle of talking to a business associate or customer and then having your daughter's friend beep in (I experienced this one personally)
  

Organizing your home business will take some work, practice and time. Don't give up. "Rome was not built in a day."