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Spring Cleaning: Get Your Business Organized

With springtime coming, now is a good time to organize your workplace. Clutter - both real and virtual - can impair productivity and hurt your company's ability to grow and succeed. Visit these resources to learn how to add some order, calm and cleanliness to your office and desktop.

Simplify your email
Few organizing tasks can seem as unrewarding as keeping your email inbox organized. The moment you get all your messages answered and filed, another dozen arrive that need to be managed. But it doesn't have to be that way. Check out 43folders.com, a family of websites about personal productivity, "life hacks", and simple ways to make your life a little better. The site's founding editor Merlin Mann has created a program called Inbox Zero that is all about getting email under control and keeping your inbox empty. Be sure to watch the video of his presentation to Google.



Consolidate your messages
DigsbyHow many ways do you communicate online? You may have separate business and personal email accounts, instant messaging programs, text messaging applications, and notes going out over different social networking groups. Instead of having to visit a half-dozen different sites to run these programs, there are now a number of Web-based applications that let you consolidate your communications through a single dashboard. Digsby promises to give you access to all your IMs, email and social networks through a single application - it is currently in "private beta" so you may need to send an email to get an invite code to download it. For IMs, Meebo is a browser-based IM program that supports multiple - and at times incompatible - IM services. And Fuser is a free online tool that creates a single interface that users can visit to manage different email and social networking communications.



Update your software
FileHippo.com Whether it is your anti-virus program or the software you use every day to run your business, it is important to have the most up-to-date version on your computer. But doing this manually can be daunting - depending on the number of programs you have, you can find yourself visiting numerous websites and switching windows back and forth while you check version numbers. Or you can use FileHippo's free Update Checker which scans your computer for installed software, checks the versions, and alerts you if there are any newer releases. These updates are neatly displayed in your browser for you to download.



Organize your boxes
What is spring cleaning without the stowing away of boxes, files and other items? But when it comes time to access these things in the future, can you remember what is stored where? Pack and Find makes locating your stored materials easier. The Web application lets you create a "personal inventory" that is essentially a small-scale database where you can list the items that go in different boxes as well as identify the location of where you've stored the box. If you take digital pictures of your items and boxes as you pack, you can upload these images into the database to further help you find what you're looking for without having to rummage through all your stored materials.



Call in a pro
NAPO Sometimes it just pays to get professional help. Professional organizers can often be quite effective in helping small and home-based businesses get more out of their workspace by using proven processes to declutter desktops, organize documents and manage workflow. The website of the National Association of Professional Organizers (NAPO) includes an automated referral system that lets you locate certified organizers in your area.


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