Organization For the Creative Business

I’m a terribly disorganized person. I’ve always been. I was the kid who would lose my winter jacket, a school book, or my entire backpack. The irony of it all is that I grew up in a family of neat-freaks. It started with my grandmother, whose mortal enemy is dirt and who has an uncanny ability to wrap things. Every Sunday she would come over for dinner and bring her famous meatballs along with an assortment of other goodies.  All were wrapped twice in plastic, then closed with rubber bands, scotch tape and twist ties and labeled in perfect handwriting.  Nary a drop of gravy in her spotless car trunk.  My mother and sister are the same; they’ve caught the addiction of labeling, storing and packing and something called “Spring Cleaning.”  But those traits were never passed to me.  My first reporting job was working in the basement press room of the US Treasury Department.  Each reporter, all from different agencies, had their own cramped cubicle.  When I walked among the cubicles my first day, I noticed that nearly every one was piled high with old press releases and newspapers, empty soda bottles, broken pens, and scribbled scraps of paper.  The chaos was comforting as I knew I’d be among people like me.

Yet running a business, even a creative business, is quite a different beast. Sure, my often distracted mind can be a benefit for generating new ideas.  But losing an important contract, a check or an appearance release could mean a lot of lost income.  So I’ve had to come up with new systems to keep myself in check and everything in seamless order, especially in the small space we have allocated in our home.

The Main Office Space:

Formally, the space is meant for a dining room, but we’ve converted it into an office with two desks. One for the main editing system, complete with speakers and a broadcast monitor. The second desk holds the laptop computer, where other non-editing activities are done.  The left side wall has a chalkboard decal where I write all my “to dos”.  The right side wall holds my inspiration board, where I tack all the postcards I take from museums and pin the places I screen Keeping the Kibbutz on maps of the US and Europe.  I also use it to tack up a calendar, which honestly is not all that inspiring, but serves as quick visual reference to compliment my electronic calendar.

    Inspiration Board How-To: I constructed the board by picking up an old dilapidated framed painting from a second-hand           store for $20.  I liked the frame, not so much the tattered painting. I attached it to the wall by screwing right through the             middle of the painting and cardboard backing. Then I bought cork squares, trimmed them with an Exacto knife to fit                     the frame and glued them to the painting with Liquid Nails.  That type of glue seems overkill, I know, but the cork squares           will fall using any other type of glue.  Find some inspiration and tack away.

1.  Make your items easy to access. These cardboard magazine files hold the Keeping the Kibbutz promotional postcards as well as Eidolon-specific note-cards.