How to Stage a Home Office for Client Meetings

Since more and more people have learned the pros of working remotely, home-based businesses are having a moment. If the chance to run a company completely on your own terms and in your own space excites you, then it might just be your next big career move. Make sure you do it right by creating the perfect home office. 

Although having a dedicated workspace is important for at-home productivity, this is also an important step to consider if you plan to work with clients over video chat or, once it’s safe, in person. Your home office needs to give the best impression. House to Home Organizing is proud to offer services that can help, as well as this primer on how to create a home office that sends the right message.

Get Your To-Dos In Order 

Before you can get to the work of making your business look great, you need to make sure it has a strong foundation. The most spectacular office is nothing if there isn’t a solid business to back it up. That’s why it’s important to start by knocking out the basic to-dos of establishing your company, such as forming an LLC or creating your mission statement.

These tasks don’t just give your business a strong start, but they should also inform how your office is decorated. After all, any part of your business that clients see should be a part of your overall brand. Keep that in mind as you start creating your company, and try to think about how you can manage brand consistency in your workspace and beyond. 

Start Strong with Organizational Advice 

Messy offices give clients the impression that you’re unable to keep up with your tasks, so make sure your space stays neat and organized. The best way to do that is to establish a strong organizational system from the very start. Professional organizers can help you get rid of clutter and develop habits that keep your space functional and looking great. 

If you’ve already gotten started, it’s not too late to start building strong organizational habits. That said, it may be a little tricky to bust up the old habits and stick with the new. Go easy on yourself, and remember to focus on consistency. Once again, having a pro on your side during this process can help you come up with an effective plan to get your workspace back on track.

Decorate for Productivity 

An office that customers see needs to look nice, so put some thought into your decorative process. Focus on decorative features that will boost your productivity while also ensuring clients feel welcome. Avoid highly personalized or unique items unless you’re interested in having a conversation about them, and make sure any humorous decor remains professional. It’s also important to give particular thought to the wall behind your computer, as this will be what people see on video calls. 

There are a few simple decorative features you can use in your office to help you feel more energized and productive during the day. For example, you can use decorative mirrors to boost the amount of light in your room. Decorating with plants is another great move, as this can help reduce stress and improve air quality. Finally, invest in an ergonomic chair and desk set up so you can avoid developing aches or pains throughout the day. 

When starting a home-based business, the way you set up your workspace can go a long way toward boosting your odds for success. Focus on creating an office that looks great - in person or online - and that helps you stay productive throughout the day. The right office can help you build the career you’ve been dreaming of.

Need a hand getting your home-based business organized? Contact us today to start your decluttering journey!

How to Create a Home Office That Will Inspire Productivity

Working from home has many advantages. For one, workers save time, energy, and money since they don’t have to commute to and from work every day. Working parents also have more time to spend with their children now than ever before. Theoretically, working from home gives employees more personal time to do whatever they want to do, be it starting a new hobby, catching up on their favorite shows, or working toward their fitness goals. Unfortunately, that isn’t always the case. 

For people who are new to remote working, it can be a huge challenge to adapt to this different work setup. Moreover, working from home has its own set of drawbacks that need to be remedied before workers can return to their usual levels of productivity. If you’re struggling to stay productive while working from home, a conducive working environment may help improve your focus and efficiency. 

Below are five tips to create a home office that encourages productivity.

Designate a Dedicated Working Space

Find a place in your home to designate as your workspace. Whether it’s a portion of your kitchen table or a room in your house, you should have an area where you can work comfortably, without any distractions. Designating a dedicated workspace helps you create a boundary between office hours and personal time. When you’re in your home office, you only have to focus on work and nothing else. Having a dedicated workspace at home also allows you more privacy, boosts concentration, and gives the psychological effect of working in the office. 

Get Your Work Tools Set Up

You can’t work efficiently if you don’t have your complete set of work tools at hand. If you’re forced to work from home because of the current pandemic, ask your manager if you can take your work tools home. This way, you have everything you need to get the job done. For those who are unable to bring their tools from the office, the most important equipment you need to have is a quality computer with a stable internet connection.

Organize Your Desk

An organized desk or workstation encourages focus and peace of mind. That said, make sure to keep anything that may distract you away from your desk. These include nonwork-related gadgets and items, such as game consoles, televisions, and entertainment sets. Most importantly, organize your work tools neatly and systematically. Keep cables and wires out of sight, and place your tools at arm’s length so you can access them without having to stand or make big movements.

Let Natural Light In

Aside from boosting vitamin D production, natural light offers many benefits to the mind and body. Exposure to natural light also helps you sleep better and longer, and everyone knows how important sleep is to one’s mental acuity and overall well-being. One study at Cornell University also found that exposure to natural light helps reduce issues, such as blurred vision, eyestrain, and headache. Therefore, pull up to those blinds or ditch those drapes, and let natural light into your home office. 

Create an Ergonomic Workstation

If you’re going to be working from home for some time, you may as well invest in improving the ergonomics of your workstation. You can do the following improvements to make your workstation ergonomic:

• Use an adjustable chair with lower back support.

• Place your monitor and other displays at eye level.

• Make sure your lighting does not cause glare to your computer screen. 

• Situate your keyboard and mouse in such a way that will help you maintain a neutral position.

• Utilize ergonomic accessories, such as footrests, headsets, balance ball chairs, and wrist rests to help maintain a neutral position.

The Takeaway

Working from home can be tough, especially if you’ve never done it before. However, creating a conducive work environment at home can help reduce the challenges of this new work setup. From designating a dedicated working space to improving the ergonomics of your home office, these changes can make working from home much easier and help you stay focused and productive. 

What are your personal tips to stay productive while working from home? Share them with us in the comments section below.

The art of downsizing - expert tips for clearing the clutter in your home

Spring is a great time for changes and new beginnings. Maybe this spring you could finally make some changes in your home. The COVID-19 pandemic left us all with little or no choice for outdoor activities and socializing. Instead, we became more oriented to private, stay-at-home entertainment. Since this is the case, we might as well use this time to make our personal space, where we spend most of our time, more pleasant. Whether you are relocating your home or just redecorating, the art of downsizing can come in handy. Of course, not everyone practices this art regularly, so we bring you some of the expert tips for clearing the clutter in your home quickly and easily.

Choose a starting point for clearing the clutter

Every endeavor needs a starting point. Similarly, if you are preparing your terrain for clearing the clutter in your home, you need to know where to begin. You could, of course, start decluttering randomly as well. In fact, some people believe that the most important thing is to start as soon as possible and that coming up with the right strategy in this kind of work doesn't matter much. One can even perceive it as an unnecessary waste of time. However, that depends on the amount of your clutter. If you only need to clean one room, cleaning randomly might work. But, if we are talking about complete home organization, you are risking losing track of what you were doing, when, and where. So always choose a specific room to begin with.

Expert tip: If you have an attic or basement, this is an ideal starting spot. You can clear and clean it first and then utilize it as temporary storage until you take care of the rest. Alternatively, start from the most spacious room in your home.

Make an inventory list and precise selection of all items

Besides being in control of where you are decluttering, you should also be careful about what you are throwing away. Or even more importantly, what you aren't. Making an inventory list of all your belongings can help you a lot with this, especially if you are organizing for seniors, or anybody else, as a favor. You may not be aware of what are items they possess and how important any of them are. But once you put everything on paper, the selection becomes more straightforward. It is even better if you can divide your inventory list into categories for easier reference.

Some suggested categories are:

• Jewelry, art, and other  valuables

• Electronics

• Personal effects

• Items suitable for charity or give-away

• Clutter - the only category of things to be disposed of

Don't get too emotional when it comes to disposal

Once we start browsing through our dusty collections of god-knows-what all kinds of scrap, suddenly all the memories rush back. Unfortunately, this feeling doesn't last long. As soon as we continue with our everyday activities, we again forget about those items. And so, piles get larger and larger. Just imagine what a waste of space this is. Of course, this doesn't mean you should throw away all your memories. Instead, try to select them the best you can and keep only the dearest ones.

Expert tip: There is no point in keeping your emotional valuables in the basement away from everyone's eyes. Alternatively, you can give them some life back by using them to personalize your bedroom.

Use all the help and tools available

One of the most common beginner's mistakes is underestimating your opponent. In this case - the clutter. Yes, you are a real hero if you manage to take care of the whole clearing process alone. But is it worth the trouble? Especially nowadays, with so many tools and professional cleaning services available. Virtual organizing is one of the latest break-through in this field, and it is certainly worth considering. Think of the time and effort you could save. An alternative, more old-school way is to get your friends and family to help you. This may not be the most effective way, but at least, it is the cheapest. And at least you don't have to do everything entirely by yourself.

Expert tip: If you don't want to deal with the heavy lifting when moving out your items, you can call a local relocation crew for help. Reliable movers can be great allies in the process, as they have the tools and the skills to handle this task without damage or injury.

Organize your home in a way to prevent piling of clutter in the future

Maybe you are done clearing the clutter in your home, but your job is not over yet. The next thing is to clutter-proof all your rooms. Only this way will all your effort pay off. What are all the sweat and sore muscles worth if your house looks the same as before after a week? Once the first pile of clutter reapers, it is already too late, so start thinking about this on time. 

Here are some practical and creative ways to promote downsizing from the first day of your new life: 

• Place bins around your home - many of them, everywhere, and in different colors. This can motivate you to recycle and be more responsible about clutter.

• Get new boxes, crates, and labeling material for easier categorization of stuff.

• Dedicate a part of your basement or house for uncategorized items. Everybody needs an organized multipurpose space in their home.

• Select one day a month for decluttering.

• Stay disciplined. Motivate yourself from time to time by imagining a spotlessly clean home. 

Even though the minimalistic way of living and decorating has been around for some time, not everyone is practicing it. Some people dedicate a lot of time to create a perfect downsizing strategy, while others prefer a more free and spontaneous approach. Still, for those who are about to embrace this new lifestyle, we hope that our expert tips for clearing the clutter in your home will be of great help.

Organizing Mistakes Making Your House Look Cluttered

What Makes a House Look Cluttered?
Have you ever walked through your supposedly clean house and gotten an uncomfortable creeping feeling? Despite your best efforts to keep things clean, it can still sometimes seem like you’re drowning in clutter.

Clean and uncluttered are two similar ideas that may come from the same book but are not on the same page. Clutter is an organizational mistake that loves to hide in plain sight.

Here are some common culprits that might be making your house look cluttered:
• Your entrance is the first thing you and others see when entering your home. It’s easy to let your entrance become a clutter trap for shoes, coats, keys and mail. A cluttered entrance can put a cluttered tint on the rest of your home.
• Those neat little piles you put things into when you’re organizing can end up swallowing your home. A nice pile is better than a tornado, but even the neatest of piles is still a pile of clutter.
• These days, everything comes with a cord. The plugs and chargers belonging to your appliances and devices may not be clutter, but they can look like clutter if you let them run wild in plain sight.

Should You Clean or Declutter First?

Decluttering before you clean will make cleaning much easier. If you put your mind to sorting through your clutter first, you’ll probably end up donating or throwing out a lot of things you don’t need. The more junk you get rid of, the less there will be to clean.

Once you’ve gone through your open-air junk and sorted it into things you want to keep and things you don’t, you will have eliminated much of your future cleaning work. Instead of looking for a way to keep all those things clean and organized, you’ll simply have fewer things. Fewer things means fewer piles, more space for your eyes to rest and less work for you.

How Do You Organize Your Household?

Start by designating a place for all the kinds of things that tend to pile up around your entrance. Use a crate for all the shoes, or train your family to keep them in rows against the wall. Use a coat rack for the winter wear, a tray or wall hooks for the keys and a pretty little basket for the mail.

Next, you may find it useful to come up with a system for the kinds of piles that tend to accumulate around the house. If bills tend to pile up on the counter, designate a bill drawer to keep them out of sight. If random clothes seem to materialize everywhere, assign a closet space for lost and found clothes.

I like to keep a chaos cupboard where I put anything that I regularly use but would otherwise leave out in the open. This can include sports gear, headphones, pet toys and even small tools. If you like organized chaos but despise clutter, keep it behind closed doors.

This also applies to all those devices and their cords. Assign a drawer where random mobile electronics belong so they don’t clutter up the couches or get lost between the cushions. Keep all the cords from your entertainment or work stations together in one place using a cable hider. Strategically placed cable hider sleeves can help you avoid tangles and lost chargers as well as reduce visible clutter.

Why Is It Important To Be Organized at Home?

Living in a mess can cause you stress. Piles and tangles can force you to constantly think about minor things that don’t deserve your attention. The less junk you keep in the open demanding your attention, the more you’ll be able to focus on the important things.

Coming up with storage systems and sticking to them also makes it easier to find things. When you designate a place where shoes go, you won’t have to spend another second thinking about where you put your shoes. Knowing where things should be is a great time saver.

Conclusion

You can usually hide in plain sight anything you don’t want to throw out or can’t move. These awesome zip-up cord concealers can consolidate all your wall and floor spaghetti. Imagine going from a mess of chargers, extensions, audio wires, Ethernet cables and USB cords to just one neat jet black line. 

When decluttering, we recommend using trash bags rather than storage bins. Storage bins signal to your brain that you might be keeping the items, which isn’t really decluttering. Trash bags tell your brain that the stuff in here is definitely leaving the house.

The easiest way to get a handle on your clutter is to start from zero. Take everything out of the room except the furniture, and then only let back in the items you use and love. This can give you a fresh perspective on both your rooms and your things and help you see the forest instead of just the trees.