Angela Taffs - Business support and advice

Declutter your home

by Angela Taffs | Dec 29, 2014 | Personal and Lifestyle

Declutter your home and improve business productivity

If you declutter your home, how can this help improve your business? Because if you have a cluttered home, you are likely to have a cluttered mind which will impact on how productive you are in your business. And this is even more relevant if you run a business from home. You will constantly be surrounded by clutter that will cause stress and take up time trying to sort through when you want something.

But what is decluttering?

Basically, decluttering is sorting out everything in your home, deciding whether to keep it or not based on some strict criteria, getting rid of everything you don’t want to keep and organising what you do want to keep.

Easy huh?

Well, no, not always.

Why?

Because so many of us hang on to so many things in our homes and just cannot bring ourselves to part with them. These items quickly and easily turn into ‘junk’ which very subtly starts to take over our time, resources and finances making us stressed and miserable. In effect cluttering our lives.

One item on its own you could probably cope with but when you take into account all the number of ‘junk’ items you have in your home, it is quite frightening when you really sit back and add up the amount of time we spend on them without realising. We have to clean these items, keep tidying them when they get in the way, find more space for them as they gather more items to join them. This all costs money when you think about it too. Cleaning materials cost money. Storage space costs money. Your time is money.

So how do you declutter your home?

Get rid of the junk! But what is junk?

Junk is something that is:

Broken
No longer used
Dated and/or obsolete
You hate or don’t really like
Doesn’t fit
Doesn’t work
Gives off negative vibes
You wouldn’t miss if you never saw it again

Top junk items around the home:

Books and magazines
Clothes
Jewellery
Toys
Presents given to you that you have never used/liked
Paperwork and bills

Junk is not something that:

You love
Makes you feel good
Makes you money
Is a necessity in daily life
You would cry over if it got stolen

It takes time and courage to declutter your home and your life but believe me, it is well worth doing. I have never known something so completely therapeutic as having decluttered a room. It is also good fun as you can discover things you had forgotten all about which can make you laugh with the memories or find that earring that you thought had disappeared forever.

You can make money be selling some of your junk items or help others by donating to charity. You can cut down on your cleaning time and bring a whole fresh look and feel to your home. And once you have done your home, you can apply exactly the same principles to any other areas such as your office or car.

So what have you been waiting for? Get started now and declutter your home. It may just help improve your business productivity.

Time management tips for busy homes

by Angela Taffs | Dec 28, 2014 | Personal and Lifestyle

How to free up more time at home with time management tips

Using some simple time management tips will add 5 minutes here, 10 minutes there and help you discover the proper utilization of your time that you can never have imagined.

Time management is essential when running a business from home.

Top Tips

Prepare the night before

Make use of your time preparing lunches, backpacks etc. the night before. Get things ready– documents, car parking change, shopping lists before ending the day out. In many ways, clutter costs much! It drains you of your time and energy. Organize things by putting keys, handbag and other items at the same spot.

Time management tips for the kids

Have kids’ backpacks hang at a designated spot and encourage them into the habit of doing homework immediately after school and loading their bags for the next day before they go to sleep.

Create a routine

Create a daily routine to streamline your day. Don’t waste time pondering over pointless things or it will end up becoming a habit. Overcome procrastination by identifying that you are beginning to delay important tasks for unnecessary ones over and over again. Determine these time wasters- the TV, the chitchat, or spending too much time checking on emails or social networking sites.

Create a list

Have a list of tasks that need doing around the house with a note of how long they take to do. Keep this list handy so that when you find you have 5 or 10 minutes spare, you can scan the list for the smaller tasks and tackle them quickly. You will be amazed how much you can get done in a commercial break on the television. Use this time to quickly wipe over the bathroom, empty waste paper bins or dust a room. Don’t just stand by the kettle waiting for it to boil if making a cup of tea. Use these couple of minutes to clean the inside of the microwave.

Work with your energy levels

Maximize the time when you are at the highest energy level. Learn to multi-task at this time. But do not let your downtime pass you by. Instead, take time to relax. All work and no play will surely makes you very dull! Your time and energy is priceless and you need to be firm in setting limits.

Delegate

No one person can do everything so let older kids help you with simple things like preparing lunch boxes, emptying the dishwasher or starting a load of wash. Delegation is also important for proper time management, which can play an important role in moulding your kids. Keep a chart where they can gain stars for the tasks they help you complete. These stars can then be exchanged for rewards when you deem they have accumulated enough.

Finally, remember that everything need not be done perfectly. We are, after all, humans and our homes should be just that, a home, not a show room.

So try following these simple time management tips at home to help you you waste less time and energy and feel less stressed or even no stress at all!