Devoted to WAHMs -Work at Home Moms

Eight loads of laundry to be folded, seven stacks of bills to pay, six boys using the same bathroom, five golden rings (around the tub), four email accounts to answer, three cars that need oil changes, two boys sent to the principals office, and a work-at-home mom ironing her straight jacket. Sing it with me!

Notice how the song started on eight. Didn't think you could handle all twelve verses cause neither can I! But seriously folks, if you are considering starting a work-from-home business or are looking for work-from-home opportunities you have got to get yourself together. If you feel like you  are disorganized now just wait until you are trying to add one more thing to juggle and it happens to be the one that provides your family's income.

So what can you do to get organized? The following are just a few tips, and I am in no way the mistress of organization. If you have any other comments, suggestions, or tips on how to organize a home office, or even a home in general, please share them with me and my readers so we can benefit from your sage advice.

• Plan Before You Purge. One of the most frustrating things when you begin to get organized is giving away or throwing away something that you could really use later. Now, in order for this to work you must renounce your tendancy to be a pack rat. Plan what you will need for your home office and then purge.
• Measure, Minimize, and Manage. Before you go shopping online at Crate and Barrel make sure you know what you will be managing, what space it will need to fit into, and how to make it accessible. If you don't you will come back with a nifty little purple hued plastic bin that not one thing fits into and it fits into not one thing!
• Get A Babysitter. Getting organized takes time and you don't want to get a start, go take care of a boo boo, come back to it again only to be called away on another mission. Stick with it until it is done or you will become even more disorganized than when you started out.
• Within Reason and Within Reach. If you are storing things such as past years receipts and taxes then get them boxed up and out of the way. The rest needs to be organized for retrieval and quick retrieval at that. Label things, don't bury them, and keep like things with like things.
• Now Or Later? To keep organized as new material comes in ask yourself if you need to deal with it now or later. If it is now deal with it, don't put it aside. If it is later determine later by day, week, or month. Anything longer should just be chucked since you will never come back to it after a month. Am I right or am I right, right, right?

Okay, this is enough to get you started on the right track. My next blog will be on how to remove peanut butter from a fax machine. People, it can be done!