Despite feeling like I live a life on the road I’m actually a home-worker. Our spare room was transformed earlier this year from a general dumping ground to a functional space for work and laundry! (It’s our only spare room so it has to do it all!) I have worked from home occasionally in other jobs now and again but I’ve never been based at home before now and to be honest I was a bit anxious about it. My main worries were about feeling like I was part of the team and making new work friends, I mean how do you forge bonds with people when you’re hundreds of miles apart? I’m usually travelling about for one or two days a week but a couple of meetings have been re-located or cancelled lately which means that last week and this week I will have had two whole weeks at home! I have not spent that many consecutive days and nights at home for nine months. I am loving it….but at the same time not loving it and after careful consideration I have concluded that there are some great things to working from home, but also some not so great things.
Here are my pros and cons of home-working:
Pros
1. My commute is about three steps into the spare room, maybe just one if I make it more of a lunge. No more sitting in traffic for me!
2. Due to my excellent commute to the office my petrol costs are practically zilch. I topped up my car at the weekend but I genuinely can’t remember the time before when I had to put petrol in.
3. No clean work clothes? I can work in my pyjamas. My work wardrobe is generally either jeans and a t-shirt or leggings and an oversized jumper now that it’s getting chilly.
4. I don’t really worry about wearing make-up either although I do pop on some tinted moisturiser so I don’t scare myself in the mirror.
5. My space is my space and no-one pinches my stapler or dumps random paperwork on my desk.
6. I can have whatever I want on my desk. Not that I have anything weird, I currently have some flowers from a friend, but I don’t have to stick to any clear desk policies that make you put all your stuff in a locker at the end of the day.
7. I can put the radio on or off whenever it takes my fancy and no-one will complain.
8. There’s virtually no office bitchiness or gossiping about people or paranoia that everyone in the staff room is bitching about you.
9. I actually think I’m more social with colleagues now than in previous jobs. Because we don’t meet face-to-face very often, when we do, everyone makes the effort and I’ve got to know some of my colleagues really well socially. I was in my last organisation for two years and I can count on one hand the number of times anyone ever met up socially.
10. You know when you walk to work when it’s cold and wet and you have to spend all day with soggy feet? I don’t miss that! My feet are warm and dry in cosy slippers.
11. I am always in for a parcel delivery! How I remember those days of having to get up at the crack of dawn on a Saturday to get to the post Office depot before the queue, pah!
12. Speaking of parcels, I can bid on my favourite eBay things when the auction ends at 11:23 on a Tuesday morning.
13. I can get on top of the housework. Sticking in a laundry load or doing the dishes is a great way to get away from your desk for a few mins while feeling homely and virtuous at the same time.
14. I can watch an episode of Criminal Minds on my lunch break. Nothing like the twisted mind of a serial killer to make you temporarily forget about that stress inducing project you’re working on!
15. My time is much more my own. If I need a bit of time for a doctor or dentist appointment it’s not a problem, I can just work my day around it.
Cons
1. It can be lonely. I spend my breaks doing laundry and the dishes!
2. There’s no one around to chat to when you fancy a cuppa. My friend and I used to meet for twix and tea time when one of us was having a bad day. You know when you bite off the ends of a twix finger and then drink your tea through it like a straw?! Not as fun alone.
3. There’s always that time, when you’re make-upless and wearing your most scruffy jumper when someone chirpy will randomly connect with you online and start talking about putting your webcam on so you feel more connected. Those people are to be feared.
4. When you are onscreen you can’t peer into the camera and pull weird faces.
5. And since my office is also where our laundry hangs to dry I always need to check that no knickers are in shot!
6. It’s so easy to spend all your money on eBay…
7. You need to be disciplined. I have no problem with working it’s the opposite for me and I need to be pretty strict about what time I log in/off so that I don’t spend every waking hour working.
8. There’s no-one else to rely on when you can’t remember how to do something on excel or your printer breaks. It’s frustrating when a small thing turns into hours on the phone to IT support because you don’t know what you’re doing!
9. You don’t get much exercise walking three steps to your office so you have to be quite dedicated to making sure you get out at some point to make sure you don’t spend your days festering indoors.
So there you have it. Thus concludes my home-working investigation and it looks like the pros win! I do like home-working but I do usually travel a bit too and that blend works for me. If I didn’t ever travel I’m not sure I could do it all day every day forever, I think I’d probably go a bit stir crazy. Today though it’s cold and wet outside and I’m sitting in my jumper and slippers drinking tea while prepping for a webinar with senior colleagues tomorrow. Better put my laundry away….!
No-one to pinch my stapler here!
girlontheroaduk 
October 28, 2015 at 19:15
Looks like my office even though my other office is my Print Shop lol!
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