Keeping your home business organised helps maintain efficiency and contributes to your bottom line. As you grow your business, you will be faced with different challenges related to choosing your home as your office.
Your home is a great place to work when you start. If you plan to grow your business and expand, you’re going to reach a point where your house just isn’t big enough to support your growth.
This is where organizing comes in. The better organised you are, to maximise your space, and make it safe and comfortable, the longer your home can serve as your home base and headquarters.
Shelving
You are going to need more shelving. Finding a blank wall to install shelving can be a challenge, but you can quickly outgrow your file cabinets and banker boxes. Unloading a stack of boxes to search out a document, can not only be hard on your back, it can also eat up precious time.
You will also need shelving for things besides paper documents. Office supplies, cleaning products, spare parts, books, magazines and other reference materials, and broken or spare computers are all things you will want shelving for.
Trash
You are going to generate a lot more trash. Don’t underestimate how much business is still conducted by mail and paper. Although much of your office communications will be electronic, a great deal of business is still conducted the old-fashioned way.
Depending on the nature of your business consider upgrading your trash services. Install a dumpster and a wheelie bin lifter. This can help you quickly and efficiently deal with the higher volume of waste you are likely to generate.
Lighting
If your space wasn’t designed as an office you might need to beef up or augment your lighting. The ideal set-up is to have good natural light, and then lighting that is task focused on a particular area. Good lighting will reduce eye strain and fatigue, so it is important to your productivity.
It has been found that the type of lighting in your workplace can affect mood and creativity. Warmer-coloured light, tending toward yellow, has been found to enhance creativity, whereas cooler shades of light, tending towards blue, help with concentration.
Flooring
If you have the opportunity to set up your home office from scratch, you can plan for the perfect flooring.
A home office can become a noisy place when you are making conference calls and video chats. It’s best to choose a flooring that can reduce noise levels. If your home business space gets a lot of traffic, you’re going to want something durable as well. Spilt coffee or food, rolling office chairs, and file cabinets can all put a strain on your flooring.
If you are converting an existing room or space to use for your office or business, then putting down floor mats or rugs can help reduce noise levels and other abuses of your flooring.
Giving some thought to these areas will make your home office or business more enjoyable and more productive.
