Home Office Organization–21st Century Style

How Long Has It Been Since You…

• Cleaned the printer?
• Watered the plants?
• Changed the oil in the company car?
• Changed or cleaned the AC/furnace filter?
• Paid the quarterly self-employment taxes?
• Swapped back-up media with the ones in the safe-deposit box?
• Backed up your hard drive?

I follow home office organization tips in the news and blogs, and sometimes I find the handiest gadgets for your home office in some unlikely places. I was reading a recent post on the cluttercontrolfreak.com blog about ending science experiments in your refrigerator with a handy new device called a Days Ago Digital Day Counter .

This device can be attached to things by magnets or by suction cups. You set it to zero, stick it to a container in your refrigerator and it counts the days since you placed that container in there. It counts up to 99 days, and if not reset, it starts counting over again.

These counters aren’t just for the refrigerator. It doesn’t matter what you attach them to, so I decided to make a list of things they could be used for in my home office that need doing at least once a quarter (about 91 days). There are a lot of things that I don’t remember the last time I cleaned, sorted, did maintenance on, purged or changed because I didn’t write them down. I thought of all sorts of things that would help keep my home office better organized and on a regular schedule. Some are listed above. Here are some more:

• time-based projects
• time to sort contents of vertical file trays
• measure printer inkjet or toner cartridge life
• computer/server maintenance
• computer back-ups
• weekly tasks
• monthly tasks
• quarterly tasks

If you don’t want to set a to-do item in your PDA until you know something needs tending to, this is a great little device to nudge you to plan to do something, but without it popping up as a to-do item on the busiest day of the month, or ringing an alarm you set three months ago in the middle of an important phone call or meeting. I do that to myself all the time in the interest of being organized and not letting anything fall through the cracks, but you can really annoy yourself if you don’t check your calender and to-do list items before each week begins.

I’m sure you can come up with some ideas of your own! Post a comment of what you would use this gadget for.

Here is a link to the entire blog post.

Now all I have to do is get things organized so I can put them on a schedule…

Please visit my previous posts. I finally found the digital camera charger and posted the pictures of my home office before I’ve done anything to de-clutter and organize it. My mess is real, folks. I’m not a neat person who will tell you what you should do, I’m a messy person who needs to find solutions to the problems most of us have dealing with all our stuff! I will post pictures as I make progress, or back-slide. I hope for the former, but I’m sure some back-sliding will happen when things get hectic.