When working a home business, it is not uncommon for boundaries to become gray and juggling to become your new work out exercise. This may especially hold true if you are a stay at home parent managing your business.

Many times people may forget that when they are working at home that they actually combined two jobs into one place. Before working from home, separations existed between work place responsibilities and household responsibilities. When you work at home, the two join together; however, in order to be efficient, separation must still exist between the two. For example, when working at a job site plenty of household duties may have been left undone before leaving the home for the day. However, when you are at home, the laundry in the dryer may call your name the entire morning until you get to it. Before you worked at home, you may have taken your children to a sitter, but now you have taken on the duties of a stay at home parent. Now that two jobs have become one, the best advice to give is to seek and maintain organization.

For starters:
1.) Establish a work zone that is solely for the business. This may mean a closet, or sheets that match your decor hung up in a corner of your living room.

2.) In this work zone, establish an organizational system for incoming mail, expenses, outgoing mail, work for today, and work for tomorrow.

3.) Utilize lists and calendars.

4.) Establish a schedule for your day.

5.) Stick to the schedule that you set.

6.) Organize errand running so that you are not on the road making endless stops and running in circles.

7.) Set up a file system to handle receipts, accounts receivable, and accounts payable.

8.) End the last thirty minutes of your day making a priority "to do" list for the next day, and straighten all paperwork before leaving your desk.

9.) Organize time to work when the children are napping to complete tasks that require devoted thinking. Turn the phone on silent during this time to complete the tasks that you have set for this time.

10.) Decide in your schedule when you will take business phone calls. Limit personal calls during the work day. (Personal calls are typically limited in the work place, so a good rule of thumb would be to keep them at a minimum here as well.)

Working from home can produce remarkable results for both your family and yourself. As with everything, practice does make perfect and constant reflection does encourage growth. If you are feeling your business is not efficient as it should be, stop and check some of the above organizational tips to see if there is an "ounce of prevention that can equate the pound of cure."

Learn more about this author, D.S. Cox.
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