Last weekend, I cleaned out my office.  

Wait, I should back up. Many of you know that when I moved, I had plans of starting my own business. This did not come to fruition for a few reasons, and I ended up looking for full-time work instead. Although I am armed with a great education and experience in my field, finding work was not so easy. I felt the impact of the recession first hand and have spent the last 7 months unemployed.  But I was the busiest unemployed person you could find, constantly applying for jobs, meeting with everyone in my field I could, and often working pro-bono for them, just to get a foot in the door. All the networking and volunteering I’ve done has actually led to something new.  Bit by bit, I am starting my own business – beginning with freelance consulting work. I know there is potential on the horizon for a new small business idea to turn into a reality as I’m already seeing a lot of interest from people in the community.  Actually, lots of communities. I will be vague about it for now, but I am excited about the plethora of opportunities that I think this fall and winter will bring. 

So, I need to make some changes. Changes to the way I budget, changes to my financial plans in general, and changes to my financial record keeping. I have to think a lot about how to budget and make spending/saving plans without a consistent income. I have to keep careful records for tax purposes. I have to find a good way of organizing my time.  And I have to budget my time, and keep track of my time so I know what projects are paying me a good return on my investment, and also so that I know when I deserve to have a break (when I manage my own time I tend to feel as though I should always be working, and I want to be able to say – “I’ve worked X hours this week, so I deserve to take Sunday off”.)

First things first, I reorganized my office. Er, that is, I organized my office.

Here’s the before picture – how embarrassing! The entire desk had turned into a “do it later” dumping ground over the last couple of months.

After: Much better! And I’ve managed to keep it perfectly organized all week. 

(Can you spot Gail?)

By the way, cats *love* it when you do this kind of reorganizing. Everything is a game.

I’d also been keeping some packaging materials around thinking that they would come in handy for reorganizing, and they did! For example, I discovered that boxes containing cotton swabs are actually perfect for storing delicate paint brushes.

Do you work from home? Are you self-employed? How do you keep organized?