I began working from home right after college when I joined our family business, Ovaleye Web Solutions. Since then the majority of the clients I have had the pleasure of working with have begun new businesses from their kitchen tables, extra bedrooms, and local coffee shops. Whether you are building a business from your home, subcontracting, or your employer is letting you work from your home office, there will be pros and cons to living the work from home lifestyle. Here are a few…
Pros to working from home:
- Flexible hours
- Familiarity in your surroundings
- Free from commuting
- Look the way you want to, when you want to
- Mix it up- sick of your home? Go work anywhere that has wifi.
- It’s cheap! You are already paying for a place to live…
- Immense amount of technology available to support your efforts.
- You can choose your office partners.
- Co-working space is now popular and more widely available for days you need to be in an office environment.
- Environmentally friendly.
- Tax write-off.
Cons to working from home:
- Looking like you rolled out of bed can mess with your work mentality.
- Kiddos can be noisy and want your attention
- Expect to spend at least $20 a week on coffee/lunch items that come with escaping your house.
- Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should work whenever you want to.
- It can be lonely…
- Distractions like television, the dishes, laundry, and vacuuming can halt productivity.
- No automatic reset that comes with commuting to and from the office.
- Utilizing some of the technology out there to make working from home easy is expensive.
- Weight gain from not walking to work and being around your kitchen.
The pro to all of the cons is that all of the above points are manageable- that’s what my blog is all about! How to make the most out of a work from home lifestyle. Check back often for posts on new home office adventures or go through the archives on what I have learned as of yet. If you are ever in need of support, feel free to contact me too!
As an after thought, writing this post made me remember a commercial that used to play before movies in the theater using Queen’s “Break Free,” which I find appropriate for the theme of this blog post.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Great list! I feel ya on many of these points, especially number 7 of the cons. It’s difficult for me to leave the stresses of work at work when my computer is just a few steps away.
Thanks for the comment Chris!