Where The Hell Do I Put My Home Business?

Okay, you’ve decided to push ahead and start your very own home based business. Now the magic question--where do I put it, how do I make the room and how do I set it up?

Well let’s start off by checking out your residence and finding the perfect place for your home office. Every home and apartment are different, so it’s going to require a little visualization from you in deciding which area of your abode will be your new home business office or work space. Perhaps you could sacrifice that extra guest bedroom now that your mother-in-law refuses to stay in the same house with you. Or maybe the garage. Or the bedroom of your multi-tattooed, 18 year old daughter whose about to move out of her bedroom and your home to live with her unemployed, punk rocker boyfriend. Or maybe the corner of your bedroom in your tiny one bedroom apartment. Of course, if the fates have smiled upon you and deemed you lucky to reside in either a large house or expansive, roomy apartment then you’re way ahead of the game.

Now before you do select which area of your residence to locate your home business office or work area, there are a few things to take into consideration. Is your home business the type of business where customers or clients will have to come to your home office in order for you to conduct your particular business? Is there a proper entrance? If some of your customers are handicapped, is your entrance to your business area handicapped accessible? Does your home have a great deal of distraction such as kids screaming, wife screaming or the family dog barking? If so, then perhaps, if possible, you will need to locate your home business away from these noisy distractions. Do you have enough room and space for the required office equipment and office furniture needed? Enough room to feel comfortable and enough room for you and other employees you might have? You have to have the unbiased, logical mind of an inhabitant from the planet Vulcan when choosing the room or area of your residence for your home business office or workspace. Below are some possible choices.

The Extra Bedroom--An obvious choice. The extra bedroom is commonly used for visiting guests or unwanted, unshaven, unemployed brother-in-laws. It’s a room that basically stays unused unless someone in your immediate circle of family and friends decides to pay you’re a visit. With the advantage of being able to be written off as a tax deduction for the square feet of the guest room, or any room you use for your home business, this is a very good choice. Of course the one disadvantage is that your customers have to actually walk through your house to get to your office. Hopefully this will not be a time when your spouse, unexpectantly exits your bathroom wearing only a towel.

Your Bedroom--If you live in a one bedroom house or apartment, this may be the only choice open to you. If it’s a small bedroom then you may have to regulate your business work area to a small corner of the bedroom. Yes, it will be cramped, but hopefully when your business become successful and begins making a good profit, you may be able to move into a larger place of residence. Until then, if all that is available to you is a small bedroom, make the best of it. Of course you will be working and sleeping in the same room. So you may have to shut down various equipment at night in order to get a good night’s sleep. On the other hand, as you lie in bed, your work has now become you new bed partner. Hope your spouse or significant other is not the jealous type.

Downstairs Rooms-Rooms such as the living room, dining room, family room in a pinch can serve as your home business office. Advantages of using these rooms are that they are usually the largest rooms in the home. Partitions, bookcases, screens or other pieces of furniture can serve to separate your home office or work space from the other areas of these rooms. Another advantage is that customers or clients do not have to walk through the more private upstairs areas to get to your office. The disadvantage of using these rooms is that these rooms tend to be very heavily people and foot traffic areas of the house. And with foot traffic comes noise and distractions because these areas are always the main gathering areas of a home.

The Kitchen--If at all possible, unless you are really pressed for space, try to avoid using your kitchen for your home based business office. Besides the fact that an area primarily used for both cooking and stuffing our faces with food, you will be inundated with people traffic, food smells. You will also be subjected to both steam and humidity from food being cooked which may play havoc or damage sensitive electronic equipment like your computer. Not to mention the possibility of enduring the annoyed, no so happy stares of your spouse because you have the audacity of invading her sacred temple of food preparation. Trust me, you will not be welcomed here. You will be underfoot and targeted for elimination.

Basement--Then of course there’s the one area of your home that gives you all the privacy that you could desire-the basement. If you are the owner of a finished basement then you are in luck. If you are the owner of a damp, moldy, unfinished basement you have a lot of work ahead of you to convert this type of basement into an area that will act as your home business office. Now as stated, a basement is on most occasions the least likely used area of a house, unless it is a finished, lower level family room type of area. In that case, if your basement covers a large amount of area, there probably is some part of the basement that you can partition off as your home office.

If your basement is a cross between Grampa Munster’s moldy, damp, basement laboratory and one of the creepy basements haunted by lost spirits on SCI FI TV’s “Ghost Hunter” TV series, then my friend you now have another grander problem.

Basements are a collection of water pipes, electrical wires, shut off valves and the like. If you have a basement with a cobwebs, concrete flooring, dampness and mold, this will require some extensive renovations as well as expense on your part to turn your family dungeon of horrors into a respectable home business environment. Working in an environment containing mold and dampness is not conducive to good healthy living. Also not a good place to have office furniture, computers and other electronic devices needed to operate your business. If you do decide to use your basement and dampness is a problem, then please do yourself a big favor and invest in a good dehumidifier which will take care of your dampness problem. Also is the floor is not up to par you probably will have to put in a subfloor and cover it with carpeting or other forms of flooring.

The Attic--Another area that provides tons of privacy and depending on what type of area it encompasses is the good old attic. You know, that room below your roof where you keep tons and tons of material items that have long since outlived their usefulness or storage for the yearly Halloween and Christmas decorations.

On the downside, attics come with their own built in disadvantages. Many attics are accessed by a pull down stairway which might make it a bit of a turn off for some of your customers. Also attics, unless finished and equip with both air conditioning and heating can be a large deterrent for putting your home business office there. In the hot summer months, attics can reach temperatures of 100+ degrees. So unless you wish to experience what a lobster experiences when put into a boiling pot, locating your business in your attic could be a very large black mark against working in that area of your home. In the winter, unless there is proper insulation and heating in the attic, you could soon find yourself feeling like a human popsicle while working in your attic work space.

Also many attics are not capable of holding a great deal of weight on the flooring. It would not be a happy day to find all your office furniture, computer, filing cabinets and other furnishings and equipment that had been in the attic suddenly materialize with a thunderous crash and settle in your master bedroom flooring and all. Unless you are a skilled carpenter or have knowledge of how much weight your attic flooring can handle, I would get the advice of a professional before going ahead with the move to the attic. Another thing to be aware of is that building codes require a certain amount of clearance from the floor to the ceiling in an attic before it can be certified as livable space. The standard measurement is 7’6” of clearance. So for your safety and to keep from possible code violation fines from your local government official, take this to heart.

The Garage--One place that can be used as a home office is your garage. The garage has many advantages including expansive area space(most garages measure between 500-600 square feet and electrical outlets. Most garages will have already been built in accordance with local city building codes, so that will not present a problem as long as your garage is in decent shape. You will need to add air conditioning and heating as well as insulating the walls and ceiling to reduce outside, extraneous noise and to lessen temperature changes.

Because of possible safety and liability reasons, you will probably have to add an entrance door to your office because most to all local safety inspections will not allow a garage door to be used as the main entrance to your business. Heaven forbid if a faulty garage door falls on you or one of your customers. Not good.

The Sunroom or Enclosed Patio-Many homes also have either a sunroom or enclosed patio addition. These two areas could also be used as your home business office or work area if feasible. These also would require heating for the winter and some form of air conditioning for the hot summer months to operate your business. If you do not have such additions to your home, note that this is a potentially expensive avenue to take for a home office work space.

So take your pick. Just make sure it’s the right area of your house and can accommodate all your business operation needs.