Running a Home Business: How to Keep Your Home and Business Separate

Running a business from home can have all kinds of advantages. You don’t have to commute or pay rent for an office, and you may be able to see your family more and keep on top of household tasks. There are often many tasks you’ll do – make sure to utilise tools such as TextMine to stay organised – but you want to make sure it doesn’t take over your personal life. 

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That all said, it’s easy for your business life and home life to clash when working from home. You could find that your home life is distracting you from work, or you could find that you’re not able to switch out of work mode when spending time with your family. Keeping both lives separate could be essential for keeping you sane. Here are five ways to separate your home and business life when running a home business.

Have a designated office space

You don’t want to be relaxing in the same place that you work. Rather than working from your sofa (or worse, from your bed), find a designated space in your home to turn into your office and make it a habit of only working from here. This could be a whole room that you designate as an office with some eye-catching contemporary office furniture, or it could simply be a desk in the corner of a room. On top of helping you to mentally separate your work and home life, this could help your family also to have a clearer idea of when you’re working and when you shouldn’t be disturbed.

Schedule work time and family time

Working from home can allow you the flexibility to set your own hours, but this doesn’t mean that you should work random hours every day. Try to set scheduled work time every day so that you’re not blending your work time and family time together (with clear boundaries, you can focus on each aspect of your life and give it all your attention).

Consider buying a work phone

Communicating with clients on your personal phone could make it hard to disconnect from work mode. Consider setting up a separate work phone to use for business purposes only – this could be a mobile phone or a landline phone. You could even turn this phone off outside of work hours to stop clients from interrupting your private life. Having two phones could also make it easier to track business calls and deduct telephone expenses that are work-related when doing your taxes.

Outsource an address for your business

If you get business mail coming through to your home address, it could be worth outsourcing a separate mail forwarding address that then relays this mail onto you. This could have several advantages – it could firstly prevent clients from knowing your personal address and potentially paying you a visit. It could also make your company look more official – rather than using a residential home address, you can use a city-based business address to give your company credibility. On top of this, it will make it easier to separate regular mail from business mail so that you don’t have to open it all at the same time.

Use alternative options for meetings

You probably don’t want to be inviting clients to your home unless your business is fairly informal. If you do need to hold meetings, consider alternative options that don’t involve inviting clients around your home. One option could be to communicate via video conferencing – this could allow you to have a face-to-face meeting without them having to travel to your home. The other option could be to visit them for meetings – if they don’t mind you coming around their home or office, this could be the best option for keeping them happy. Alternatively, you could find a midway house to meet, such as a coffee bar. In fact, coffee bars can be great places to meet as they offer a stimulating environment for conversation – just make sure to avoid busy times if you want to secure a table.

This is a collaborative post.