For many people, it’s been a year of significant change. Because of COVID-19, there are more people working from home now than ever before. Familiar work patterns have been thrown off, and we’ve been forced to adjust on the fly, to make our new circumstances work best for us. For a lot of us, that means trying to figure out how to make sure we keep our work lives and our home lives organized.

Whether you’re working at home for the first time or you’ve been home-based for years, there’s always room to improve your organizational methods. One often overlooked tool is the whiteboard.

Most of us have used whiteboards since we were in school—even the smell of dry erase markers can bring back memories. But having a dry erase board at home isn’t very common. Most of the time, home dry erase boards are smaller, often around the size of a piece of printer paper, and they’re usually specialized for things like chores and meal planning. These whiteboards are useful, but they probably won’t meet your needs.

Whiteboard Paint

That doesn’t mean you need to go out and buy a big whiteboard to hang on your wall. Writey offers WriteyPaint, a whiteboard paint that can transform almost any surface into a custom whiteboard.

Whiteboard paint has been around for a long time, but WriteyPaint offers you unmatched quality. While other brands of whiteboard paint require you to mix together different cans of paint in a prescribed ratio, WriteyPaint comes in a single can. Just choose your finish, spread the paint, let it dry for 72 hours, and you have a custom whiteboard available for your use.

Getting Started

With WriteyPaint, you can determine the size and shape of the board you want to create, from a small square to an entire floor to ceiling wall. Your needs will determine what shape works best for you. And you may decide you need multiple boards, to help keep your entire family organized.

Once the whiteboard paint has dried, you can start organizing. The first question to ask yourself is what you’re trying to organize. Your work life and your home life probably have different needs, and for some people, it helps to keep the two organized separately. That doesn’t mean you don’t consider your family when organizing your work, or vice versa. But it can help you stay focused on each particular area.

Keeping Work Organized

When you’re working from home, it can be easy to lose focus on the tasks you have in front of you. But by using whiteboard paint, you can create a flexible, easy to use workspace to track your tasks across all phases of completion.

One popular method for organizing workflow is called Kanban, which visualizes your work as it progresses through various stages of completion. Kanban boards are usually organized in vertical columns, the most basic of which are labeled “waiting,” “in progress,” and “completed.” Individual tasks are then placed in these columns, either on cards or in writing.

When you create a Kanban board using whiteboard paint, you give yourself tons of flexibility. It’s easy to add or delete columns, if you need to change how you’re breaking down your tasks. Or you can add horizontal rows, sometimes called “swim lanes,” that can help you keep different work streams separated.

These columns and rows can be drawn in marker, but if you feel like they’re going to remain fairly steady, you can use tape to draw them out. This method is more permanent than dry erase markers, but they can still be altered if your needs change. It also means you won’t erase your column or row lines when you move an item from one column to the next.

Creative Workspace

Your whiteboard also gives you space to create, whatever your needs. You can visualize data through charts or graphs on your whiteboard, or you can create brainstorming lists as you’re working on a new idea.

Using your whiteboard in creative ways can help you keep your thoughts and ideas organized. Try dividing your board into different areas, with each area focused on a single task or idea. That way you can split your focus efficiently, concentrating on one idea at a time while having the bigger picture right there in front of you.

Another trick is to use different colored markers for different ideas. If you’re looking at several aspects of one project, try and break it down into smaller parts, and use a different colored marker whenever you’re writing about each part. This helps keep complex projects from overwhelming you.

Keeping Home Organized

One of the hardest parts of working from home is that your home life can often infringe on your workspace. And with kids and partners now spending more time working from home as well, it can get a little overwhelming. A whiteboard might be just the thing to help keep everyone feeling a little more organized.

Whiteboard paint can help you keep your family on the same page. If you have trouble keeping track of what everyone is supposed to be doing, you can create a schedule chart. Put each family member in their own column, then list each day of the week on the left side of your chart. Then you simply fill in each box with what each person is supposed to be doing. Plus, if your schedule changes, it’s easy to make the change on your chart as well.

This same chart works for any number of tasks, like chores, homework, or meal planning. Just by writing everything down, you can keep your home running smoothly!

WriteyPaint Whiteboard Paint

WriteyPaint makes creating your own custom whiteboard easy, without the hassle of a wall-mounted frame or a rolling easel. When you order your WriteyPaint kit, you get more than just whiteboard paint. You’ll get a whiteboard that’s guaranteed to erase cleanly, with a 5-year limited guarantee. Even more important, you’ll have a way to keep your work better organized, making you more productive.