The Savvy Entrepreneur

Being that I no longer had a desk to work on, with my entire business spread across the office floor, my husband and I decided to put the organization project in overdrive this weekend. We sent the kids to our parents and got crackin’.

Friday night we came up with a floor plan and took measurements. After dropping off the kids, we went to Reno Depot to choose our materials and returned to empty the entire room. Saturday, we woke up early, returned to Reno Depot to purchase our materials and started working. Sunday, we hammered the last nail and shopped around for the finishing touches.

This is how my work area now looks:

A few elements that made this such a successful transition were:

• Two 2-drawer filing cabinets, holding up the entire work area. Just about everything now fits in those 2 cabinets and there’s no loss of space by having an actual desk.
• Two long bookshelves (which were leftovers from the piece we cut for my desk). The first shelf holds all my business-related books. I placed sentimental items on the top shelf, without taking up precious work space.
• Office organizer (black cube to the right) allowing me to go vertical. It holds essential supplies and “loose ends,” plus it’s big and sturdy enough for my printer.
• My closet (you don’t see it here), where I was able to store my fireproof filing cabinet (for our personal files), place larger supplies (printing paper, empty binders, blank notepads, etc), and tidy away boxes with “stuff” that I need to keep, but don’t access regularly.

The other side of the room now has enough place for a crib. We were even able to install an activity center for the kids (another leftover from the original cut):

We’re bringing in the crib in a few weeks.

Monday was my brainstorming session with Tracey Lawton, were she helped me come up with a simple, workable filing system that I will put in place during the first week of April.

Yesterday and today were spent on organizing my PC and Outlook files.

This is how my hard drive is now organized:

And this is what Outlook looks like (See? Nothing in my Inbox!):

While my paper filing system is not physically done (I’ve schedule 3 half days to tackle that), I’m ready to go on to Step 2 – Contact Management.

Stay tuned as I take on this step, and get closer to being an ultra-productive and ultra-organized entrepreneur!

I’ve implemented many suggestions you’ve sent me thus far. Please keep those comments coming, because I am putting them to use!