Do you feel overwhelmed by all the small administrative tasks you need to do for your business and your personal life? Declutter your business and personal administration is the way to feeling in control again.

Administrative tasks

These tasks vary from paying taxes, updating business or personal insurances, paying dentist bills and business subscriptions and keeping your business and personal administration up to date. Often the mail keeps piling up on your desk and you totally forget to take action.

You also need to manage your business calendar with appointments with team members, customers, suppliers, travel and plan out chunks in your day to get some work done. In addition to your business calendar, your personal calendar also needs to be managed with medical appointments, dinners with friends and your work-out schedule. If you have kids, you get a lot of extra sport and school activities on your plate as well.

When all these tasks and announcements pop in your email or mail box, you can feel overwhelmed and don’t see when you have time to take care of all these small tasks.

I found a quick way to declutter my business and personal administration and feel in control again and want you to benefit from my strategy as well. It will help you eliminate the feeling of overwhelm and you’ll feel completely in control.

You can implement the steps below immediately in your business and personal life. Let’s get started!

14 steps to declutter your business and personal administration

1. Take 15 minutes on Sunday evening to go over your schedule and plan your week. If you have a partner, align who is doing what and delegate where possible. You don’t need to do everything yourself. Discuss per day who is picking up the kids from school, taking them to sports lessons, who is cooking and who’s taking care of the groceries. Schedule these personal activities in your business calendar to keep one overview.
2. Set your goal for the coming week and add your priorities. Define maximum one task per day that needs to be finished, no matter what.
3. Add your personal to-do list per day to your business priorities so you have one overview and one place to look at. Don’t scatter this information and use different note books or calendars, that will make it more difficult for you to stick to your schedule and it will cost you too much time to look everything up.
4. Schedule one hour per week on a fixed day and a fixed time to do your business administration. Note this down in your calendar and stick to it. During this hour you pay your business bills, log your working hours, update your administration, pay your taxes, apply for business requirements if you need anything.
5. Create a master template for your business administration that you can use over and over again. Every year you start with an empty file. Make sure to include the ‘year’ in the file name to make it easy for you to find it back. In this file you include your income, your expenses, the tax you need to pay, your phone bills, fuel receipts, expenses on customers, travel expenses, car expenses, kilometers you’ve driven by car or by bike.
6. Schedule 30 minutes per week on a fixed day and a fixed time to do your personal administration. Block this 30 minutes in your calendar and do not skip this appointment with yourself. In this time block you can pay your personal bills, make some calls, schedule medical appointments, schedule activities for the kids, make your grocery list, schedule your weekend activities, update your personal administration, file your personal documents. In thirty minutes you can achieve a lot and it prevents you from letting the paper pile on your desk or kitchen table become higher and higher.
7. I use my digital calendar and have a paper one as well on my desk. I use my paper calendar to plan in more detail and set my goals and priorities and add my personal to-do list. My digital calendar contains all appointments and I block time to get work done.
8. Assign a physical inbox for your business, for you personally, for your partner and one for your kids. When physical mail comes in you can put it in the right inbox and process it once per week in the 30 minutes you’ve allocated to do this task. This way you keep your physical post organized and easy accessible when needed. Find a place in your home to store these physical inboxes out of sight. You want to keep your house tidy.
9. Create a Private folder and a Business folder on your computer if you’re using one computer to do both. In you business folder, create multiple folders depending on your business activities. In your Private folder, create a folder for every person in your household and for the different topics that are recurring in your household. Such as taxes, rent, mortgage, household bills, house renovation, insurances, holidays, the car.
10. Tidy up the folders on your computer once per year. Archive the documents you no longer need or delete them if this is allowed. Check how long you need to keep your business and personal administration for legal and tax reasons. Schedule this activity in your calendar as well. Maybe January is the best time for you or during the summer? This is an appointment with yourself you don’t want to miss!
11. Assign a ring binder for every person in your household and for the house itself. The binder for the house can be used to archive mail related to insurances on the house, maintenance, governmental topics related to the house.
12. A tidy house is a clear head. At the end of every day, take 10 minutes to tidy up your house. Fold your clothes, move the laundry from the floor in the laundry basket. Store all the stuff that came out of the cupboards and put it back where it belongs. Make a neat pile of magazines that are laying around and clean your desk.
13. Don’t delay cleaning up after dinner. Put the dishes immediately in the dish washer, hand wash remaining items and put them back in the cupboards. Clean your kitchen sink and table top and you’re good to go. This will make such a difference the next morning when you’re having breakfast and don’t need to look at the dirty dishes.
14. Clean desk policy is the ultimate zen moment when starting your business day. You don’t have to look for your stuff, everything is stored at the right place. You have room to put your favorite coffee and can start your working day with a fresh mind.

Relax and feel in control!

You can relax now, you have scheduled in your calendar when you’re handling your business and personal administration, your house is cleaned up at the end of the day and you can start your business day with a clean desk. This gives peace of mind and clarity in your head. Your administration is under control so you don’t need to worry anymore about missing any payments or being too late to register for something. Decluttering your business and personal administration gives you the feeling of being in control, all the time.

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