I've started work on a presentation about organizing a home office to keep your family on track. This is as close to residential organizing as I get, but it's still fundamentally based in business organization. And that is because, frankly, your family is a lot like a small business.
Like a business, your family has revenues and expenses. Your family has operating activities, investing activities and financing activities. If you have kids, you have a kind of payroll (room, board, allowance) and benefits (health insurance, savings account) system. The parent(s) function as executives, making decisions and strategic plans, and occasionally calling on guidance and help from a board of advisors that might consist of grandparents, extended family and/or good friends. And like a business, your family receives an influx of paper every single day.
That is why, like every business, your family needs an office. Yes: "needs." I don't often make imperative directives; I try to frame my advice in terms of "I'd recommend..." or "You could try..." but I think the necessity of an office is absolute. That said, the office doesn't have to be a separate room. For some families, a desk and filing cabinet will work fine, and in dire straits, a portable file box can do the job.
What matters most is that there is one designated place in your home for paper relating to your family business activities. A place where everyone in your family knows to go when they need to find a document, store a document or make sure someone else gets to see that document. You could think of this area as "paper central" for your family.
That might not sound terribly cozy, welcoming or retreat-like, and those are frequently the kind of adjectives we use to describe our ideal home environment. But you are absolutely free to add personal touches to the "paper central" area to make it comfortable and easy to use, so it doesn't feel too much like a corporate file room (unless that's your design aesthetic ;-) ). I think it's crucial to recognize that our homes need to support us in our present reality, and the reality for every family is that it is, at least in part, a business.
