Darren Moore, of Lawrence, Kansas, has been working out of his house for about 20 years, and occasionally finds himself wondering if he should rent an office. After all, he and his wife have four sons. Over the years, while running Titus D, Co., a brand design and consultancy, Moore has heard everything from crying babies to shouting and roughhousing in the background, as the boys aged.
But despite the appeal of an outside office, he mostly has worked from home.
“I’ve tried renting an office twice. I’m a slow learner,” he jokes.
There are a lot of reasons to work from home. You may enjoy the 45-second commute from your bed to your desktop or laptop. You can work in your pajamas. You get to see your family a lot.
There are also many reasons for those who work from home to desire an office away from home. A short commute offers time to clear your mind. You can create a sharper distinction between work life and home life, and get reprieve from screaming children or barking pets. It can be nice to be out in the world mingling with other working people.
There’s no right or wrong answer here. If renting an outside office works for you, it’s a smart decision. If it doesn’t, then the home office is where it’s at. But before you plunge into a decision you may regret, quiz yourself on these four questions:
Do you want to avoid paying rent? If you’re making a living but not posting record-setting profits, you may understandably not be thrilled about renting an outside office or work space — or paying for other extras, like Internet access or electricity.
But it may not cost as much as you imagine. Moore says he spent $250 a month on his office, both back in 2003 and in 2012, when he tried it again. Pat Driscoll, a general contractor who works on residential homes in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, rents office space outside his family’s home, also for $250 a month, which includes an on-site parking space as well as a shared bathroom with another office. Of course, for $250 a month, expect no-frills. But a side benefit of a cheap office, Driscoll says, is that if your work often pulls you out of the house — Driscoll is frequently at somebody’s house, renovating a kitchen — you won’t care as much if you aren’t in the office all the time.
Do you want a bit of a commute? Some people like to drive, and you may be nostalgic about how you used to drink your coffee and listen to the radio on your way into the office. But even if your commute is short, it may not be as fun as you remember.
Kathryn and Jeff Hawkins, who own Eucalypt Media, LLC, a content marketing agency in Scarborough, Maine, work out of a home office. But they tried renting an office (also for $250 a month, as it turns out), and although they only had a 15-minute, one-way drive, arguably a short hop compared to many other commuters, the time behind the wheel started to bug them.
“The commute robbed us of valuable time,” Kathryn says, adding that they would have rather used that extra 30 minutes in the day for working more or biking. After becoming a mom, Kathryn says she realized the commuting was just keeping them away from their daughter, who was in day care.
The Hawkins might have been cool with the commute if the office was paying off in other ways, but it wasn’t, and after two years, they went back to working out of a home office — but in a bigger house.
That cost them far more than the home office, of course, “but it makes up for a lot in time and convenience,” Kathryn says. She adds that they just hired their first full-time employee and decided to have her work out of her home as well.
Are you concerned about having a sane space to meet with clients? This is a draw for many self-employed people who want a remote office. They want to meet with potential clients but not in the house, especially if there are pets and kids running amok. Just make sure that reality and what you’re imagining will match up.
When the Hawkins started their company, they envisioned using their remote office to meet with their clients, but they soon realized that wasn’t going to be happening.
“Our clients are based all over the country,” Kathryn says. “If we ever wanted to meet with anyone local, we’d be just as happy to visit their office or meet at a coffee shop.”
Moore had a similar experience. “My thinking process with the first office was that clients would come and visit me, and it’ll be a good break for them to visit. A couple of them did, but for the most part, they didn’t,” he says.
When Moore tried working in a new office in 2012, his boys were older (they’re now 12 to 24; the oldest two no longer live in the house), and he had the work-life balance down pretty well.
But he figured: “At this point, I’m working by myself, all day long, every day, where I’m doing a lot of emailing and making a few phone calls, and, you know, there wasn’t a lot of human interaction for me at this point. My thinking was that if you get out to your own office, you’ll at least be around some people a little bit.”
Instead, he ended up working in a small office where he was doing a lot of emailing and making a few phone calls. Just like back at home, only this time he was paying money.
If he ever makes a third attempt at this, Moore says he will rent a shared office. (For those thinking about this option, websites such as SharedOffices.com and SharedBusinessSpace.com, may help you find a place.)
Do you struggle with boundaries? You may not be working well from home because it’s your home. Joel MacDonald, an Edmonton, Alberta, resident who runs a Web-based company, EnergyRates.Ca, says that when he spent several years working full time from home, first on another business and now this one, it didn’t go well.
“My brain just wouldn’t get into gear, and I struggled with getting work done during office hours,” MacDonald says.
“My schedule disintegrated,” he adds. “And while it might be convenient to be able to work without a set schedule, it’s a bit of a problem if a customer can’t get a hold of you during typical office hours because you worked through half the night and consequently are in bed till 2 in the afternoon.”
That actually never happened to him, MacDonald says. But he could see the writing on the wall.
Driscoll says that the lack of boundaries is why moving his home office out of the home has been successful. It was a decision made after his wife became pregnant with their second child. Driscoll had already awoken their 2-year-old from a nap when he brought a client over to the house. It was just going to get worse.
“I don’t know if I’m making more, but I’ve seen more success in the business. I’m more responsive to client emails and estimates are getting off quicker,” Driscoll says, adding that he is also finding that his quality of time at home has been enhanced, with more free time during the evenings to spend with his wife and daughter. If he needs to, after his daughter goes to bed, he drives the five minutes to his remote office.
Driscoll’s wife, Stephanie, says that every dollar spent on the remote office has been worth it.
“With the home office, I felt like it was a monster in the corner,” Driscoll says, describing a room that was near the kitchen. “Every time I looked at my desk, I’d think, ‘Geez, there’s something I should be doing.'”
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Telecommuters: Is Renting an Office Worth It? originally appeared on usnews.com
