If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

Setting up a home office is one of the most important tasks you will face when you make the decision to work from your own home. Your home office can be a corner of your kitchen or living room or, if space permits, a former spare bedroom.

Size is less important that functionality. When deciding on where to set up the nerve center of your business, there are some factors you need to consider.

What about proper lighting?

Having the correct lighting is very important when setting up a home office. Eyestrain and eye problems can result if you spend long periods of time in a dimly lit room staring at papers or a computer screen. In order to avoid eventual vision problems, you will want to have a well-lit home office.

Are there plenty of electrical outlets?

You want to take into consideration electrical outlets available for the equipment that you will be using day-to-day. At the very least, today’s modern home office has a light, computer, telephone, answering machine, monitor, scanner, printer and speakers (optional but still nice to have). You may also add a radio/CD/MP3 player that will need to be powered. Make sure you have enough electrical outlets to power your home office adequately so that you do not have play plug switch on equipment.

Is the area well ventilated and dust free?

All of that computer equipment needs to “breath” to remain cool and functioning properly. If you have ever, “fried” a computer you know how important it is to keep the fan clean and dust free.

Does you home office have telephone access?

More and more people are using their cellular telephones as their main telephones, but not always. If you are not on broadband Internet, you will need to have a landline in order to dialup your Internet Company. You can also use your cell phone to do it, but you will need to make a decision about telephone access prior to starting work. If you are not going the cell phone way, you will need to have a separate line for telephone and dialup.

Having separate telephone lines in your home office is important because you don’t want to be online if a client is trying to reach you. Make sure that this separate line is set up to receive phone calls while you are online. If you have broadband, one phone line will suffice. These things need to be considered prior to opening your door for business.

Have You Considered Internet Access?

Most modern home offices will have a decent Internet connection - DSL or Broadband. Gone are the days when dialup access was sufficient, and while it can still be done, most home office business have a fast Internet connection. You may be already DSL-ready and only need to call your telephone company to get it started.

If you already have a broadband connection, make sure you have access to the cable connection where you are located. If you choose to go with a wireless connection to your broadband access, be sure and secure and encrypt it with WPA encryption and not WEP. WEP encryption was hacked about 10 years ago, and if you are doing secure transactions online, spring for a wireless modem/router with the latest encryption available. Better still, you might want to stick with straight cabling for faster speed and safety.

If you take advantage of a nearby WiFi hotspot where you can go wireless, be sure and avoid making purchases or conducting unencrypted transactions while wireless on a public wireless connection. If you go wireless at home, make sure you have encrypted your connection and you should be just fine. With all of these decisions made, you will have the basics for starting the setup of your home office organization.

Popularity: 6% [?]

Bookmark to:
         

If you are fed up with your office space, have to hunt for a pen like you are on safari, and spend more time hunting for documents than working on them, this article is for you. As you forage through the “one week ago” pile, and try not to topple the whole thing into an unworkable mess, read this article for tips on how to reverse and improve your home office world.

Every home office deals with excess paper and whether you are running a small or large business, it is still something to contend with, and one that gets worth when there is no organization.

So, what do you do to wrestle the clutter-beast into submission?

Space - The Essential Ingredient

One of the largest problems with staying organized lies in the lack of a system and not having enough room to effectively implement the system.

If you organize a drawer, take everything out and replace it in the drawer but still have no space to put anything else in that drawer, you have pretty much wasted your time. The un-filed pile of papers remains and will simply grow again.

Having space to add home office furniture in the form of filing cabinets and storage bins will help considerably with organization. Be sure and have at least one quarter to one third or more growing room when you implement your system. Extra space encourages you to keep up with your organization efforts.

This also goes for items such as architectural drawings or other products or documents you may accumulate.

Purge unnecessary papers. It will allow for more space, and help you avoid scrambling through miscellaneous paperwork looking for important documents.

Simple Filing System

Do not make your system too complicated or it will be hard to follow through. Color-coding can be the easiest if you do not have too many categories. This is effective for systems, which only require ‘Income’, ‘Expense’, ‘Projects’, ‘Correspondence’, or something similar.

When filing large groups of things like clients, projects, and invoices use a single drawer for each group of files that are related. Using a four or 5-drawer filing cabinet is good in that it can be divided either alphabetically or chronologically.

For things that you use very frequently, consider getting a cork, posting or white board that you can place near your desk. This works for phone number lists, client projects and outlines, ‘To-Do’ lists and appointment calendars.

After You Set It Up, Maintenance Is Next

A system is only as good as the person using it is. If you do not keep it up, no system is useful. Starting with a smaller, simpler system of files in a cabinet near you is good. You can then take your daily or weekly items and store them in a more permanent place when you are finished.

The system will also work for stuff that you need off and on as the project you are working on progresses. Things like price lists, if you’re dealing with products, lists and articles that you need to add to a website, rewrites and the like. If you need to refer to it continuously, then you want it close.

How Do You File?

If you want to realistically keep up a filing system, labeled boxes might be a better fit. You might want to alleviate the piles of papers and sort them into boxes when you are done with them. I had a friend who invested in a really good scanner, and digitized everything, then threw the originals away. While that might be a bit excessive, it just goes to show that different filing techniques work for different people. Whatever you decide, keep it up and purge your papers occasionally and the system will work like a charm for you.

All Things Need a Place

It is an old saying, but all too true. Everything must have someplace to go back to. Avoid loose pens, pencils, papers cell phones, glasses and so on. Find a place to put them when you are finished with them, then put them back when you are done. Do not forget to reward yourself for a job well done, and keep your system going!

Popularity: 7% [?]

Bookmark to:
         

We live in a new world, where children are in danger from Internet predators and parents harbor real concerns for their children’s welfare every time they let them go. We live in a time when Global Positioning systems are being used to help locate and track children and keep them safe. With the growing popularity of this new technology, parents can keep an eye on their children from afar via satellites originally deployed by the government for security uses. GPS systems are so good that they can literally find the exact location of a person carrying a locater chip. They can locate that person down to within a few feet.

This allows parents to outfit their children with the GPS technology and to then have the power to monitor their whereabouts if any concerns should arise. The possible safety advantages offered by a GPS child monitoring system are substantial and parents are beginning to embrace the technology as it become increasingly “mainstream” and available.

Many systems are offered from the simple wrist units to GPS bags and backpacks. The potential benefit to users is obvious. If a child gets lost wearing a GPS wrist unit, the parents and police have an effective way of locating them quickly. These wrist units, however, are not for all children. With younger children, it might be useless in that they could forget or lose the wristwatch because they are not used to wearing one. In older children, it might be more effective.

Cellular telephones are another popular GPS chip repository. As cell phones become increasingly ubiquitous, the idea of outfitting them with GPS technology to aid in child tracking has grown.

At least one manufacturer offers GPS tracking systems via a chip housed in a plastic sleeve that fits around the cell phone. The cell phone solution is ideal for certain ages of children. For instance, in very young children, it would make no sense. In this instance, other options need to be explored.

As a result, one manufacturer has begun producing bags, backpacks, and book bags that have GPS technology. Children naturally carry these things, so there is no confusion or chance for the child to lose it. They are extremely well suited to younger children, while the cell phone makes more sense for the older child who may not need to carry a book bag everywhere.

Other tools include a simple necklace that features the GPS chip as something of a charm, and other options. Even more GPS child tracking tools are certain to be released in the near future, as the field will undoubtedly continue to experience rapid and significant growth. This growth in the availability of products is a boon to parents, as they will be able to seek out tools that truly meet the unique needs of their particular child or children.

While any type of GPS tool would be effective in locating children, one of the most important things to consider is what type of GPS device you choose. You want it to be reliable and effective with a track record you can review. Secondary would be the pricing structure.

After appropriate performance levels are established, it is essential, of course, to choose a product that matches the needs and tendencies of the child who will be tracked. Parents will want to make sure they choose a tracking device that fits the child lifestyle appropriately.

Popularity: 7% [?]

Bookmark to: