Telecommuting by design

Review: Home is where the stand-alone fax is

"Home Office Life: Making a Space To Work at Home"
Lisa Kanarek
Rockport Publishers, 144 pages, 2001

In this story: 'The lifestyle suits you' 'You mean business' RELATED STORIES, SITES

By Porter Anderson
CNN Career

(CNN) -- There's a publicist in Dallas whose office is in the rear of her home. Each morning she gets dressed for work, walks through the living room to the front door, leaves the house, walks around it -- outside -- and re-enters at the rear to work in her office. She's making herself maybe the opposite of "at home."

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	How appealing to you is a home office? Totally. I'm taking over the garage now. I'm torn: I want out of the workplace, but I don't want to bring my work home. No appeal. I'm a factory fan. View Results

And one of the first things author Lisa Kanarek tells you in her new book from Rockport, "Home Office Life," is that "Stepping into your office, you should feel as though you've crossed an imaginary threshold: You're at work now, away from the laundry, lawn and cable TV."

With that and a few other basic points of purpose touched on in her introduction ("The One-Minute Commute"), Kanarek is off on a long and colorful explication of the possibilities and promise of home-officing.

Her approach, while primarily on the physical design and look of a home-office space, is something of a cheerleader's. Her book's title is her firm's -- and her Web site's -- name. Kanarek has served as a specialist on the issue to companies including Volkswagen, Texas Instruments, Lexmark, Microsoft, Fuji, American Airlines and Office Depot.

And certainly, her book works as an engaging showcase for her experience. Not only are the photos so good that you'll want to tear out a wall or two just to build yourself that home office you've always thought might airlift you out of the sweatshop you go to daily, but there also are some useful stuff-you-can-use bulleted lists of handy things throughout.

For example, Kanarek runs down a basic list of home-office equipment, reassuring you that you don't have to buy everything Staples sells.

•   Computer system with monitor, keyboard and modem

•   Ink-jet or laser printer

•   Stand-alone fax (if not within your computer) or multi-function peripheral (fax, copier and printer)

•   Backup system (CD/RW, Zip, Jazz or tape drive)

•   Desktop lamp for task lighting

•   Smoke detector and fire extinguisher

•   Telephone with voice mail or answering system

'The lifestyle suits you'

As might be expected, the karmic questions in this field are no easier than they are in any other.

"Before deciding to work at home," Kanarek understates the chicken-or-the-egg quandary, "it's important to determine whether the lifestyle suits you." Realizing that thousands will get stuck right there on Page 14 and never come out with a hard decision (the pros and cons of home-office are perplexing and stubborn), she wisely moves along quickly.

BEFORE YOU SET UP SHOP
	A lot of considerations may go into the best decisions about where to have a home office, how to equip it and what to expect of it. "Home Office Life" author Lisa Kanarek has these eight tips for you.

From here, Kanarek tries to hit all the areas of information someone might need. Occasionally, this gets her into the "duh" realm. An example of that is in her squib about "organizing your briefcase" if you're going to be carrying work back and forth between your home office and a workplace office. Duh.

But in other instances, she fares better and offers some pretty sophisticated observations. In the chapter called "Carving out a space," for example, she comes up with some mildly out-there thoughts for where to put your office if you're tight on space or trying not to cause too much upheaval in your home. There might be space under a stairway, for example, she points out. Or in a long hallway, on a landing, in a laundry room.

There are special sections on lighting, seating, storage, decor, offices with room to expand (and the other kind) and modular offices.

And the bite-sized info feed just keeps coming, with plenty of the quick-bullet lists of useful ideas, among them this "ergonomic tip sheet."

•   Place equipment in positions that place minimal strain on your neck, shoulders, arms and back

•   Use proper lighting and eliminate glare

•   Choose halogen lights for task lighting

•   Invest in ergonomic keyboards, wrist supports, copy trays and lumbar cushions; investigate alternatives to the standard computer mouse

•   Buy the best chair you can afford

•   Your work surface should be 28 inches high and the keyboard height should be adjustable, between 23 inches and 27 inches

•   Inclined surfaces are better for writing, drawing or marking anything by hand

•   A hands-free headset for your phone allows you to talk while typing or taking notes without hunching up your shoulders or straining your neck

•   An adjustable footrest takes pressure off your knees and ankles while you work

'You mean business'

The good news is that Kanarek doesn't duck the trickier topics. It would be easy to stick to such routine issues as dark vs. light woods, metal file cabinets vs. wooden, furnishings vs. plants. But Kanarek wades on into such issues as how you're going to feel if a client has to visit your home office.

Creating professional space within a real-life home is always a challenge. After all, you started working from home to get out of the corporate world, but in order to get work, you need to appear as professional as possible. Laundry baskets overflowing with dirty clothes, toys scattered about, and newspapers that haven't quite made it to the recycling bin are not only unprofessional, they're a business risk. After all, you need to be twice as professional as your corporate competitors in order to convince your clients that you mean business.

Lisa Kanarek

If you'll be entertaining clients in your home on a regular basis, try to create a separate entrance to your home office to avoid having your clients walk through your home. If there is no logical place to put another entrance, you will have to keep on top of your housework. Before a client enters your home, close the doors to any rooms you don't want clients to see. Create space within or near your home office for client and staff meetings. ... Don't forget to have a supply of innocuous coffee cups available: Your fine china will seem pretentious, disposalbe cups look tacky and tend to spill, and you'll lose any sense of professionalism if you serve your next big client a hot beverage in your favorite World's Greatest Mom coffee mug.

It's that sort of deft balance -- between the warm-and-fuzzy attractions of home and the hard realities of business -- that Kanarek uses to stay out of the domestic wallow this book could have been.

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HomeOfficeLife.com
Rockport publishers

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