Are there benefits from working from home?
After my last post, I wanted to look at the other end of things, mainly, that yes there are many benefits from working from home, and even that some possible ‘issues’ with working from home are benefits too.
Family Time
My husband, Paul has worked retail for over 8 years. He has a great job, and we are blessed, but there is one thing you can count on with retail work, your schedule is constantly changing. I thrive on schedules, using my calendar to schedule things weeks in advance. That’s just not possible with a husband who works retail. We know his schedule one week in advance, getting his schedule every Friday at noon, for the following Sunday through Saturday. Obviously, if we know of something big coming up, we can schedule it off, but overall, we only know one week in advance.
Homeschooling had been a blessing with his schedule. We could adjust our weekends, our school days and our appointments. When I started working from home about a year after he got into retail, I let my first client know I would be taking weekdays off for our weekends. They were fine with that.
Working from home gives you the ability to have more family time because you can adjust your schedule a lot more than when you have to ‘go’ to work.
I’m my own boss
This isn’t 100% true, but I’m listing it this way. Lol Honestly, when you have clients you work for, they are the boss. You want to do what they want for their sites, products etc… But for the purpose of this post, the benefits of working from home, being your own boss is a huge benefit.
You can decide what you want to do and when. How you want your company to run. What colors you use in your website, how you market your work and more. It’s all you. As I mentioned in my other post, that is something you need to make sure you are ready for, because as great as it is to be your own boss, it has to be something you are comfortable with. You can’t blame the boss if something goes wrong unless you want to blame yourself. 😀
Working from anywhere
I love the digital mobile lifestyle of this day and age. It makes working from home so much easier. I can check my emails, log into sites and servers, write up tickets, talk on Slack to my group and so much more. It gives me the ability to leave the house a lot more, and for that I’m grateful.
When you work from home, you can easily start to close yourself in and not get out and about. Depending on what is happening, I like both. I can easily stay home for days on end, loving that I don’t have to drive here and there all the time. But I also love getting out, doing some shopping or going for a cup of coffee. Or the times I’m in a waiting room for an appointment, having my phone makes working from home easy.
With the services I do, I can get a text message or a message from our Slack channel about issues with servers, sites, and other general technical items. Being able to answer emails and messages when I’m out, allows me to give my clients the support they need.
The same thing that is a blessing that you can work from anywhere can also be a burden. With technology never allowing us to truly leave the office we can find ourselves constantly working and having no downtime. Make sure you aren’t doing that to yourself or your family.
Encouragement
My focus here at Watered Garden Creations is to help wives and moms that work from home manage working from home. I want to share organizational and management tips I have learned and continue to learn as a work at home wife and mom. I want to help encourage you if you are working or want to from home.
Even if you get out and about, working from home can be lonely at times, regardless of what your business is. Maybe your family doesn’t understand what you do and what excites you. I know I deal with that when I start, what my husband lovingly calls ‘tech talk’. I love things technical and I’m always excited when I’ve figured out a problem for a client or built something new with my site. Or as I talk about the struggles of running my own business and things I’m trying to accomplish. Since he is not a technical person, he doesn’t always get my excitment. I know I can’t be the only one that has dealt with this. I not only want to be an encouragement to you but help us all be an encouragement together.
Work from home ideas
I know some of you reading this already have a work at home business or you know what you want to start. But maybe some of you aren’t 100% sure what you want, all you know is that you want to work from home. I’ve put together a list of some work from home ideas. In the future, I’ll write more in-depth about a few of these ideas but I wanted to give you a list if you are looking for some ideas. There are so many possibilities beyond this list. Essentially, what you need to do is find a need that you can help fulfill, and you have a business you can do from home. And remember, if you ever need help to set up your website, need a virtual assistant or managing your online presence, please feel free to contact me. I would love to work together and help you get the solution you need.
Blogging (not a hobby blog)
Affiliates
Writing books
Creating classes
Creating graphics to sell
Stock photos
Technical services
Virtual Assistant
Social Media Manager
Content Creator
Ghostwriter
Editor
Customer Service
Sales
Call Center
Jewelry design
Craft projects to create and sell
I hope this list helps you get an idea of some things you can do from home to earn money. I would love to hear from you. Do you work from home? What kind of business do you have? What kind of encouragement and support do you have for yourself? Please leave a comment and share what you do.
