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Small Business Insights
	From the January 14, 2000 print edition

Cut the Clutter

Small businesses get organized

Laura Aronson-Starks, who describes herself as "a mild pack rat," is watching an amazing transformation occur in her 400-square-foot space at Aronson Fine Art and Appraisals in Atlanta.

The piles are disappearing.

"The stacks of papers aren't there anymore," said Aronson-Starks, who runs the company her parents operated first some 30 years ago. "We've redone my files where they make much more sense," she said. "We've made labels for all files that are bold and in large print, so when I open the drawer I can actually see it and it's not in small handwriting."

There is more work to go, but Aronson-Starks, with help from professional organizers, has accomplished what many small-business owners often find they don't have time to do: She's putting better organization systems in place and forming good habits to keep those systems working.

Small-business owners say they get so caught up in the day-to-day operation of their business, with little or revolving help, that it doesn't take long for files, important dates and contacts' phone numbers to become lost in the tangle of disorganization.

Overwhelmed by details

"Sometimes you feel overwhelmed by the things you need to do and you worry about the small stuff instead of the big picture," said Debbie McGee, owner of Delightful Dee Referral Service in Mableton, who has not enlisted a professional organizer's help but is working on common trouble areas, such as filing and writing things down in a calendar.

"More and more small-businesses people are wearing more and more hats," said Judith Kolberg, chief executive of her company, FileHeads in Atlanta, and president of the Georgia chapter of the National Association of Professional Organizers. "I've seen people become not only office manager and salesperson, they are also Web master and software development people."

"The company generates an enormous amount of paper and information ... everything has a very long production cycle," Kolberg said. "If you don't have office hours, if you're always out in the field, you don't have a chance to open your mail. Once in a while, you have to land."

Disorganization loses money

But once small businesses do land and see that they can't continue on their cluttered path, business has already suffered -- by losing money, usually.

"Most of the time [an organizer is called in] when they've lost a major contract," said organizer Peggy Duncan of Duncan Resource Group Inc. in Atlanta. "They forgot to do something they promised and the client has to keep calling. They start to realize they can't keep going like that."

Many organizers, who have most often worked with very large clients, say small businesses seem to be opening up more to the idea of hiring a professional organizer. The service can run anywhere from $35 to $150 an hour, with corporations typically on the higher end, said Charlotte DeMarco, who is working with Aronson-Starks and runs From Chaos to Order, a Woodstock-based company.

Despite the cost involved, small businesses are reaching out for help.

While creating a sensible filing system and throwing out unnecessary papers is crucial, it appears businesses increasingly also want to ease their office organization stress through the ancient Chinese art of feng shui (pronounced fung shway).

"I'm getting a lot of requests from business groups to talk about feng shui," said Tracy Miller of Gazelle Feng Shui in Atlanta.

Changing your environment

Miller says feng shui is "a way to change your environment so that people change their perceptions in that environment."

Take the position of a receptionist's desk in an office -- often it is right in front of the door, where he or she is bombarded by people.

"Moving that desk to the side, [the receptionist] is not confronted by people" when they first walk in the door, Miller said. This is an easy example of fixing a problem through feng shui.

A better use of time is what Aronson-Starks is after, as well as an elegant setting for her business. In addition to everyday essentials to her business, a collection of 30 years' worth of catalogs and reference books has taken up space.

"Basically she had a lot of paper that was undiagnosed, that she didn't have a chance to look at. I assembled all the unknown paper, " said DeMarco, a professed "file nut."

DeMarco's system included creating an "action box" which she describes as a holding pen for various papers until they are ready to be thrown away.

For example, there are "to call" and "to write" files holding phone numbers and addresses, respectively; all business cards and scraps of paper go in a "contact" folder; there's a folder for errands and a "to read" file.

DeMarco recommends that you throw out all junk mail and catalogs; create a "to pay" file where bills go; a "take home" or "take to office" file that you use to file and transport if you need something personal that ended up at the office, or vice versa; and so on.

Store it

Among DeMarco's more unique suggestions: take older files and store them off site, where the boxes are bar-coded and the contents known so that they can be retrieved easily. For example, if Aronson-Starks needs some information from a particular file, she simply calls the storage facility, gives the bar-code number, and the file is pulled and relayed to her -- by fax, for example. The boxes are now being prepared for their new home.

Of course, there is still some adjusting to the new system. Aronson-Starks is warming up more to using the action box. "Well ... I'm working on it," she said.

Copyright 2000 American City Business Journals Inc. Click for permission to reprint (PRC# 1.1670.271982)

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