In my previous posts I talked about one of my favorite benefits of working from home – having a great excuse for hanging out at the local coffee shop.
Today, I want to cover the another “perk” (pardon the pun) of working from home which is portability.
I grew up in Minnesota with a very close-knit family. All of my cousins, aunts, uncles, sisters and my parents still reside there. While I love Montana, I often miss my family and want to visit them as often as possible.
While you will probably think I am insane, every few months I pack up my two preschoolers and make a twelve hour mini-van trek to Minnesota to spend time with my family. I simply grab my briefcase, my laptop two suitcases and a laundry basket full of random things to keep my kids entertained.
While I am not crazy about the lengthy drive, I feel blessed that I can pack up my business and go wherever I want, whenever I want. If I were not home-based, I would have had to ask (actually beg) for time off. I’d need a vacation, following my vacation due to the seemingly endless piles of paperwork I’d missed while I was away. As an independent home-based worker, I still enjoy my vacations, but I try to do at least a few hours of work daily so it doesn’t pile up.
I’ve met numerous people who enjoy home-businesses because their spouses have military careers or other positions that require frequent travel or moves. While it isn’t always simple to pack up an entire business to move, it is often much easier to move a home based business than to move to a different state and start over…from scratch.
I am fairly certain that the “portability” aspect of my home-business is what keeps me motivated through some of the more challenging seasons. Whenever I feel like throwing in the towel, I stop and think about the arguments I’ve had with co-workers over who gets to take Christmas Eve off, or whether or not I have enough vacation time stored up to attend a family wedding (or funeral) for that matter. There is nothing better than grabbing my laptop (and my preschoolers) at a moment’s notice to take a trek across the country for no reason other than feeling a bit homesick.
What do you love about being home-based? Tell us in the comments section.