successful home working
Working from Home Stories
Case studies and experiences for information & inspiration
Top 10 tips for working from home
812 hours ago
This colourful graphic can be found in photographer Rosie Bray’s blog. Rosie has just celebrated her first year in business and as well as her top 10 tips of home working, in her post she shares the 10 lessons she’s learnt during her first year.
As is so often the way, I can’t remember exactly how I ‘met’ Rosie, but it was quite likely via mutual friends on Twitter. We had a long chat when I was doing some research on new home workers, and Rosie sent me the photo of her living room home office for the Home Office Gallery. Journalist Huma Qureshi spotted the picture and included Rosie in her recent article about home offices in The Independent. You can now see it in the latest Home Office Gallery.
So my top tip for working from home would be to participate in carefully chosen sites and social media as much as you have time for – you just never know where it might lead 
Do you have a top tip to share with other home workers?
Home working mums and dads
171 day ago
Today’s guest post is from Kalliopi and Diona, who run the Greek site mammasworkathome.gr:
One of us had been working from home for many years before our site came to life, as a translator, and the other, a computer engineer/site developer had more recently made the big change. Both of us though, had already realized that one of the biggest challenges home workers usually face, is isolation and not getting out of the house much!
We decided to host interviews of other home workers, mostly work from home mothers whom we got to know online, in order to talk about what makes us happy or anxious when running a home based business.
Working with small kids around proved the most challenging thing to deal with. Caring for them and giving them the attention they need calls for flexible planning and scheduling. Elina is the creator and co-owner of Sunny Side, an e-shop with organic and fair trade products, and a mother of a very vibrant toddler. “I don’t usually have the luxury to choose my working hours. I wake up around 4am so I can have some time to work without any distractions and when there is a lot of workload, I spend much of the weekend working too…”
Having a working space and a home under the same roof, means inventing special ways of building a professional, as well as a relaxed environment for every member of the household. Almost all our interviewees mentioned how important is the role of their life partner when trying to keep steady office hours or make business phone calls and video meetings.
Konstantinos is a developer who works remotely for Greenpeace International and his wife Stella is co-owner and administrator of a popular recipe portal. They live with their kids in southwest Greece and they both work from home. “We live and work together 24 hours a day. We share everything that needs to be done around the house and we truly respect each other’s working hours.”
‘Office working has never suited me’
64 days ago
Sheree Lowe, also known as SundownerVA, is the latest contributor to the Home Office Gallery with her fascinating itemisation of the bits and pieces she carries round as a mobile worker. This is what she told me in the email that accompanied her photo:
‘Office working has never suited me. The main reason for this is that I feel completely stifled by routine. One of the reasons I stopped working for someone else was that when I walked into the office, I knew what I would be doing that day … and I knew what I would be doing the next day, and the next day, and the next day, and could see my dreary working life mapped out, all the way to the horizon.
‘Working for myself, no two days are the same, and the day I am expecting when I wake up in the morning is not usually the day I’m reflecting back on that evening! I love how great opportunities constantly come up if you’re open to them, and if you’re not in the right mood for something on one particular day, no worries, you can adjust your day accordingly. And THAT is why I don’t have an office! I don’t have a separate space for a home office at home, and I will never rent any office space if I can avoid it.’
I love this firstly because it confirms my own belief that you don’t need a dedicated space for a home office, and it’s always nice to feel right, and secondly because it so neatly sums up the reasons so many of us choose this path and continue on it, even when it gets hard – very hard – and a job and salary seem such a tempting alternative.
Sheree asked me why I set up Work from Home Wisdom. The short answer is that I work for myself because working for someone else feels limiting and lacking in fulfilment. And I’m doing this work relating to home working because I previously ran a cleaning business that was financially very successful but mind-numbingly dull.
I knew that my next venture had to be something that drew much more on my experience and skills and allowed me to express myself more, and after a very long time this is what it turned out to be! I’m still working on how to make it as financially viable as the cleaning business, and I’ll be telling you more about my plans soon.
Why have you chosen to do what you do? Was it carefully planned or did you fall into it by accident?
Home offices – the reality
183 months ago
Last week Paul Graves sent me this photo of his home office desk in response to the tidy ones he sees on my home office pages, and wrote this about his attitude to home working:
‘I love seeing all the home office pictures on workfromhomewisdom.com. There are some lovely, inspiring places that people work. But I don’t get too depressed about them as I’m convinced they have been ‘photoshopped’. I can tell this, not because I’m a computer graphics expert, but if you look carefully none of the pictures have random bits of lego or old envelopes lying around!
‘I’ve been an IT homeworker for about 18 months. Within about 3 days of setting up a simple office in the spare room my desk had become covered in clutter. As I look at it now almost all of it doesn’t need to be here (particularly not the swimming goggle?!) But as long as I can get to the keyboard and see the screens the junk doesn’t bother me. I do a clear out when I reach project milestones and certain paperwork isn’t needed anymore. There are a few glorious days when the desk is clear. Then the surfaces are quickly filled, with generous help from the children.
‘I like having everything neat and tidy. But I love working from home more. I get flexibility in my hours, and I see my family far more that I did before, so I’ll cope with the mess. And I’ll tell myself all the wonderful pictures of other people’s home office must be just too good to be true!’
I think Paul brilliantly sums up the reality of working from home. I have no children to help me accumulate clutter, but even so it’s not long after a major clearout that there’s stuff all over the place again. I prefer to think of it as evidence that my life is a busy and productive one, full of connections to interesting people and happenings. I’m sure yours is too, but I hope you’ll also enjoy the beautiful spaces I pin to my Pinterest board. And please keep on sending those home office pictures, photoshopped or not!
Home working in Greece
439 months ago
Today’s guest post is by Kalliopi and Diona, an electrical and computer engineer and freelance translator, two work-at-home Greek mothers who got to know each other online. Finding out that they were both working from home, they decided to join forces and create a blog, Mammas Work At Home, sharing Greek content for work-at-home mums. Here they explain how working from home is slowly becoming a more popular choice in Greece in response to economic and social changes:
‘Traditional choices for young families in Greece, especially during the baby’s first couple of years, have been to entrust the baby with the grandparents or hire a full-time nanny so that the mother will return to work. During the past few years these choices have been changing due to a number of reasons.
‘Grandparents are still working; families move mainly to bigger towns and hiring a nanny may not be the most affordable option. The country has been going some very important financial changes which affect not only the state affairs but households and individuals too. Long hours keep parents away from their home and family beyond the 9-5 schedule. Mothers do not always fit the ideal corporate profile and may not be the preferable candidate choice.
‘Starting a home based business or working from a home office are emerging choices for mothers who wish to spend more time with their family and continue their career or pursue a new one. Working from home seems to be gaining in popularity taking small but steady steps. At Mammas Work At Home we try to provide an online meeting place to exchange all kinds of information from practical details and tax regulations to creative activities for the kids and inspiring success stories.
‘Especially since the country has been facing the reality of a new economy, our blog has been receiving an increasing number of emails from mothers who wish to know more about the options they have to work from home. It is indeed very moving to see how mums communicate their concerns about work as well as personal and family matters. And it is really inspiring to see how women seek career solutions beyond the traditional work opportunities set out for them overcoming the somehow old-fashioned view that working from home might be regarded as less professional.’
The UK is also facing big changes – how do you see home and work life changing in the future?
