Business Style: February

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Get Organized

With today’s rapid pace and our full business and personal schedules, a better-organized life is a top-of-the-list goal for most.
    Even if you are a master of multitasking, you may need to do something specific, such as fine-tune a filing system, or completely overhaul your work and home environments. Your need for organization will be even more crucial if you work from home, where the trickle-over factor exists when the two systems converge under one roof. The good news is that interior designers and professional organizers can guide you through your chaos or improve a now-defunct system.
    Organization: A harsh word to some and a mystery to others. Some attempt to tackle organization but don’t quite get it right. Others have no idea where to start. If you’re in either one of these camps, it’s time to call in the professionals who can teach you the right skills, coach you to the finish line, and make you a believer. The science of organization is liberating, rewarding and, yes, even fun.
    Still in doubt? Tune in to watch HGTV’s “Mission: Organization” or “Sell This House,” to see dramatic transformations when clutter is removed and organization is introduced into people’s lives.
    Interior designers have made the use of space with style an art form, and they follow the common sense dictum that form follows function. Designers are also specialists in product knowledge and will design a room, a business environment, or an entire building with an eye for storage and materials to house various organization systems and functions.
    More importantly, they can pull your office needs together in half the time it would take you. The American Society of Interior Designers is composed of 38,000 members in 48 chapters throughout the United States and Canada. The International Interior Design Association is a professional networking and educational association of more than 10,000 members with more than 30 chapters around the world. Visit their websites to find a credentialed local designer.

Home Office Challenge

Whatever your work situation, an effective organizational system will further the goals of your business and your environment. If your system doesn’t work, it will be painfully obvious to you, your associates and your clients.
    Commercial and residential interior designer Mary Ann Downey and her staff execute very big projects, including the award-winning 70,000-square-foot U.S. Small Business Administration office in Citrus Heights, out of her 640-square-foot office at the back of her residential property in Land Park. Downey, who has been in the design business for more than 26 years, outgrew her at-home office in the back of her house years ago.
    With some very strategic planning, she razed her old garage and built the very model of an efficient office with a loft. It’s airy, stylish and well organized to handle staff and clients in its present use with a kitchen and full bath. In its next life, it can easily function as a fully equipped in-law or guest cottage.
    What the Mary Ann Downey Interior Design office lacks in width, it more than makes up in height, with many tall shelves for storage, mobile filing carts, galvanized metal filing bins, and modular work stations. Functional vintage and antique pieces blend together to soften the technical look. Large windows on two walls provide generously wide window seating for clients and work space and increase natural light, an essential tool for color and textile selection.
    “As with all client projects, I started with what we needed to function: workstations, a client meeting area, drafting space, and lots of easy-to-reach storage for reference books, fabric samples, and project files,” says Downey. “Building this office here also has proved to be good financial organization for me as a single woman, since I had the property available rather than renting or purchasing more space and it has adaptability for future uses.”

Organize This! 

For 20 years, the National Association of Professional Organizers with a membership today of 3,300 individuals across the country, has been dedicated to sharing organizing principles in this growing industry to promote business and personal productivity. NAPO has declared January “Get Organized Month” in an effort to educate the public about the benefits of organization to reduce stress, improve the quality of life, and create time and money savings. Who doesn’t want that for 2006? NAPO’s members include organizing consultants, speakers, trainers, authors, and manufacturers of organizing products. Visit NAPO’s website to find a local organizer.
    Lee Mahla, a former education consultant and productivity trainer for numerous Fortune 500 companies, became a professional organizer and member of NAPO when she started her business, Get OrderLee in Gold River several years ago. Mahla teaches community education classes and holds private seminars on organization. She also coaches clients on a weekly, monthly or quarterly schedule to “simplify, control clutter and create workable systems for the home or office.”
    Mahla finds the work rewarding: “With more than 90 percent of my clients, we identify a project to work on that’s pushed them to make the call, and then we move on to other projects. It’s a very personal relationship with a lot of trust involved when someone asks for help to organize elements of their life or business.” 

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