Working from home can be the most rewarding thing, but it can also be chaotic! Because contrary to popular belief, working at home does not always mean your home is home-decorating-magazine perfect, in fact it often means the opposite.

Working from a home office, leads to clutter, a LOT of clutter, and when you are your only employee, things can get tough in keeping your home neat. You need to find time to do your bookkeeping, your marketing, your website updates, your writing, your networking… Phew! I’m already tired! Who has time to keep a home neat?

That is when planning comes to play. See, women, are wonderful (and beautiful) beings capable to multitasking, all we need is some organization. I’m going to share with you the way I manage my work and home tasks, here’s a simple step by step guide.

1. Plan for tomorrow- If this is your first day, work today as you usually do and plan for tomorrow, grab your planner and fill it up with your business and personal commitments that you have no control of the schedule. Pay attention to empty pockets of time, you will use those later.
2. Common areas- Keep your kitchen clean every day as you go, you do dishes and when you’re finished, clean the counters and sweep or mop the floor, it just takes 5-10 minutes more out of your time and a LOAD of stress out of your shoulders.Tidy up living room and/or family room every night; again, it just takes 5-10 minutes of your time, but you will feel great. I mop them every night (because I have a dog and I hate the “dog smell”) but you can do it every other night.
3. Create a work plan- I have 3 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms at home, I live in a condo so I don’t have a yard, but create a work plan that breaks down your home into one or two tasks a day. I have a total of 5 areas to work on, so I work one area a day.

Here’s an example:

Monday	Clean Master Bathroom
Tuesday	Master Bedroom: dust, vacuum and mop (Hint: I bought those sweeping and dusting pads and they are amazing, you better try them, they cut the work time in half)
Wednesday	Daughter’s Bedroom: Ask your kid to tidy up and put away toys (if they’re old enough) dust, vacuum and mop (read the hint from above)
Thursday	Son’s Bedroom: Ask your kid to tidy up and put away toys (if they’re old enough) dust, vacuum and mop (read the hint from above)
Friday	Clean Kid’s Bathroom

4. Make a to-do list- Remember the empty pockets of time of tip #1? Now is the time to use them. Most likely your planner has something called “Prioritized Daily Task List” write there EVERYTHING you need to get done. Wash the dishes, take out the trash, publish my newsletter, write an article, walk the dog, everything. Check them off as you go. Be sure to use our next tip to make the most of your time.
5. Use “unusable” time-slots- Combine little things that mostly do themselves, with things that you can actually start, stop and then go back to finish. While I’m waiting for my website pages updates to upload, I take out the trash, de-clutter my desk or load the washing machine. While I’m downloading and printing my orders, I am washing the dishes from breakfast. It’s not rare that I’m folding the laundry while I read posts in my favorite forums.
6. Don’t waste any time- I get carried away with my emails, Ryze, etc. So I leave those for later at night. At home, everybody goes to bed, (including hubby) around 9 pm so that gives me around 2 hours to fool around (I’m a night owl) so I visit other mom’s sites, do some shopping, look for new online courses or business help websites, etc.

It took me about 2 hours to finish this article, but while I did it, I bathe the dog, I saved my kids from some mean ants that were trying to get access to their room, I cleaned my son’s room, I fed the kids.

I washed the dishes from lunch, I printed some new orders that just made it to my inbox, and now that I’m finished with the article I feel accomplished, and I still have plenty of time to do other things, start cooking dinner, process the incoming orders, etc.