Home Office Organization–21st Century Style

Archive for December, 2007

Computer technology and the power of the World Wide Web allow many more people to work from a computer at home than ever before and the number grows each year.

You gain a number of perks when you work from home that benefit your family and quality of life.

1. Save time, money, frustration and help the environment by not driving to work
2. Have an extra hour or more per day for other activities
3. Mix your personal and business life with a flexible schedule
4. Have the option to home-school your children
5. Avoid daycare
6. Eat healthier for less money
7. Have time to exercise regularly
8. Work when you are the most productive

Benefits of Not Driving to Work

When you don’t drive to work you save around an hour or more per day. Here is a list of other benefits:

• avoid traffic frustration and road rage.
• avoid car accidents more by not being on the road.
• may reduce your car insurance premium because you drive fewer miles per year
• save money because you’re not buying as much gasoline. With gas at around $3/gallon, not driving as much can be a large financial benefit.
• help the environment because you’re not burning an oil-based fuel and forming chemical compounds that create smog, ozone and greenhouse gases.

An Extra Hour a Day - Priceless

An extra waking hour without having to reduce sleep is nearly priceless in today’s go-go-go world. You could:

• use that time to write a piece of content for a blog or website you use to make a living
• spend extra time with your children and/or spouse
• exercise
• read your email
• read the paper
• read a book
• watch the news
• complete chores around the house
• sleep an hour longer

Mix Personal and Business Life

When you work from home you have the flexibility to mix your personal and business life to the benefit of both. How?

• Get breakfast ready, start the laundry, eat and do the dishes right after you start a long print or scan job on your computer.
• Fill break times with personal errands like grocery shopping when stores are less crowded and better stocked. There is also less traffic during the mid-morning and mid-afternoon.
• Put dinner on to cook, take care of young children, and home-school older children.
• Move the laundry from the washer to the dryer, wash another load, and fold while listening to a work-related podcast or audio book.
• Cut grass, exercise and do gardening in the morning when it’s cooler and work later into the day when it’s too hot to be outdoors. This is especially true in the south.
• Work Saturdays and take a weekday off to avoid weekend crowds and traffic everywhere.
• Work only as many hours as needed to complete the work. You may get more done in 4 to 6 hours at home that would take you 8 to 9 hours at the workplace.

Option to Home-school Children

Home-schooling is becoming increasingly popular with the decline of public school systems all over America and the increasing cost of private schools, which may be no better than the public schools. The home-school options have improved considerably, too.

If you have a child who would benefit from home-schooling you can complete an entire school-day in 2-4 hours. If you travel with your occupation the children can come with you, which is an education in itself.

I’ll discuss the benefits of home-schooling in another post.

Avoid Daycare

Daycare came along when working women with full-time careers started having children and chose not to or could not afford to stay home.

We (me included) dropped our babies and toddlers off at a daycare center where we left the rearing of our children, the next generation, to minimum wage workers. Frankly, they are not us by any stretch of the imagination. There are extremely good daycare centers to be sure, but there aren’t enough of them to accommodate all the children in need of daycare.

The daycare center may or may not instill our values and expected behaviors in our children. I’ve had to reteach a lot of values and behaviors my son learned in daycare and elementary school after I started home-schooling him.

Daycare is also very expensive. If you have more than two children you have to make a heck of a salary to afford to work away from home.

Alternatives to daycare if you don’t work from home are friends and neighbors you trust and extended family members willing to take care of your kids.

Eat Better, Save Money

When we’re at home there is no reason to go out to eat. That means no more (or a lot less) fast food, a lot fewer junk calories and spending less money.

Lunch is a short walk to the kitchen which we should have well-stocked with nutritious choices for all our meals. It can be a sandwich and fruit, leftovers from last night’s supper or leftovers frozen in individual servings.

For example, a meal of spaghetti with meat sauce and a vegetable to feed 6 people costs around $5 to prepare. A basic meal at McDonald’s of a regular hamburger, regular fries and a small drink costs over $3 and feeds one person.

You can have the same benefits if you always bring you lunch if you work away from home, but I know I was guilty of eating out at least a few times a month for a lot more than $5 each time I did it.

You can also take the time to put supper on to cook and then continue working. You have a less expensive, more nutritious evening meal that you don’t have to go out to get or rush to prepare when you get home from work.

Time for Exercise

Being at home with a flexible schedule allows you to exercise when it’s best for you. The benefits of exercise are numerous and it should be a part of our daily routine whether you bike, walk, run, or do any of a number of other activities.

If mornings are your best time you don’t have to get up before dawn.

If lunchtime is best, you can exercise, shower and then eat without the boss looking in your empty office or cubical wondering why you’re taking an hour instead of 30 minutes. Unless your employer has an on-site gym, it’s really hard to fit the exercise period with commute into a one-hour time slot.

You still have the option of exercising in the evening. Many people don’t like to exercise after work because they feel too tired. Having the above options open leaves us no excuse not to exercise at some point during the day.

Work When You’re Most Productive

What if you’re a night person? Having to be at work at 7 a.m. may mean your employer only gets a good half to three-fourths of a day’s work out of you because you’re still half asleep for 2-4 hours when you get to work.

We all have a natural body clock and unless we are extremely motivated to change it, it’s very hard to get up early if you hate to and it makes doing whatever you have to do when you hate getting up a whole lot less pleasant.

When you work at home you can work in the afternoon, evening, and at night if you’re more productive at those times.

I love working from home for these reasons and more. I especially don’t miss the stress, office politics and bosses playing favorites in the corporate world. I don’t feel rushed every minute of every working day like I used to.

I don’t feel isolated because of contact with others online through chat, email and other online interaction, text-messaging, and the good old-fashioned telephone.

Leave comments and tell us what you like and dislike about working from home. If you don’t work at home, tell us what you think you might like and dislike about working from home.

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