My Day at the Home Office – SAHM Freelancing
Name a few items vital to your office? Have you named yours yet?
I would love to say my MacBook Pro, iPhone and iPad are all I need, and yes I spend 90% work time solely on them I do have to concede I need a few other items. Let me start by discussion my work setup. I am a stay at home mother (SAHM) and my desk is simple. I have a counter top (faux marble top) with two cabinets supporting it. I keep my files in my right cabinet. In my left cabinet, top drawer, I keep my pens, pencils, markers, rulers, tape dispenser, etc. (I keep a clean desk top.) The bottom drawer, left cabinet, is kept for scrap materials as well as paper I am going to shred. It is a pretty nice setup most things are at arm’s reach. I keep my trusty crosscut paper shredder next to the left cabinet under the desk and the trash can to the left of the left cabinet.
I have a highly portable office setup, since my main electronic devices are my MacBook Pro notebook computer, the iPad and iPhone. I also have an external 22” Samsung monitor, I plug into my MBP so I can work on two displays at once and I keep my Epson scanner on the desk top.
Here’s a look at my daily routine. I steep some Yerba Mate, instead of coffee. I find it gives me a calming boost without the jitters of coffee. As I sip my Yerba Mate, I read over the news and my favorite rss feeds on my iPad and then it’s time to check the mail and get started on another rewarding/sometimes not so rewarding day of freelancing.
I walk into the office throw the mail on the desk and sit down with my favorite cup of tea. I go through the mail weeding out the junk mail from the important mail. The junk mail get’s thrown in the “scrap” drawer in the cabinet until the end of the day. The important mail get’s open immediately then I start to organize it. If it is a bill I put it in my To Do folder (front of my filing cabinet); if it is a paid statement, I put it in the company folder. I keep my client’s folders in the top drawer and vender folder’s in the bottom drawer.
I begin making my phone calls early in the day as honestly, I hate making business calls. I get them out of the way and then focus on my print / graphic design and occasional web design.
At the end of the day, I pull out the junk mail and start my shredding them up in the paper shredder. I use a crosscut paper shredder because they provide more security than the ol’ strip cut. I also use one that is guaranteed not to paper jam, as that is one of my worst pet peeves in the office.
There also comes a time when I no longer want to keep old financial records or billing statements that is why I keep a scanner on the desktop. Whenever I want to shred a old document, I also scan it in first, and keep a digital record, just in case, I realize later I shouldn’t have shredded it. The scanner is also good for client contracts. I always keep a digital signed copy of client contracts.
Other ways I stay organized are making full use of my MBP, iPad and iPhone. I was using Omnigroup’s Omnifocus on my MacBook Pro and iPhone to keep track of my to-do-lists because I could keep them synced. I try to follow the principles in David Allen wrote about in his Getting Things Done (GTD) book. Since Omnigroup has not released a version for the iPad, I have switched to Appigo’s ToDo apps. I can keep my tasks synced using Tooledo. For my billing, I use MarketCircle’s Billings and their Billings Touch, I hope they come up with an iPad version soon.
I will prolly write another article/post about my home office organization soon. Stay tune.
Toni Stevenson is a freelancer. Toni’s Twitter. Toni’s Tumblr.
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