Hubby starting business from home

Ok ladies,
I know alot of you work from home or have partners that work from home so I have some questions. How do you keep the work environment seperate from the home environment? What do you do about visitors? How do you get a three year old to respect that daddy and mummy (yes i will be in there too) are working and that we need quiet time etc..... I don't want her to feel neglected. Need to find a balance. Hubby has tried this before and I must admit I was not very supportive of him at all. I think its the fact that he doesn't seperate work and home life and spends most of it in the office....but I feel I need to really support him this time around and make a real go of it so he doesn't feel he has failed. On top of that I will be working night shift 4 nights a fortnight to keep a steady flow of some income to cover bills etc...
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated and I am sure I will think of more questions as you reply.
THANKS,
lollylegs

Hey Laura,

We have a couple of home businesses..but at the moment, they're still side business, DH still works in the city. In his old job, he used to officially work 2 days at home, but he was never busy, so he was always in and out of the office. We also only have an 11 month old at the moment, so probably a bit easier to keep amused than a 3 yr old. So not sure if any of my advice will be very sound! LOL.

Work hours - try and stick to the 9-5 work hrs being the strict hours.. anything outside of that needs to be flexible. Ours was hard, because DH is on the computer all the time in his leisure time as well, so we did have a few arguments over him in front of the computer ALL the time. He was always "working" whenever I asked...but you can bet your life he was surfing. LOL.

Perhaps you can setup a little desk for Talia, so she has time at "work" too? Perhaps that can be drawing or painting time? Then she mightn't feel too excluded and will happily go off and play outside for a while on her own too?

I hope you can find a way of doing it, as I reckon working from home is fantastic, and our goal is to be in a position one day for DH to leave his 'day' job and we both just work from home.

Dunno if any of that helped LOL. i'll be reading the replies here, coz I bet there'll be some great tips..which I'll be needing in the future!

Yeah - Caro - my own work hours are whenever they fit in.. often midnight! LOL. I think if DH were working from home.. I would try and keep him to working in work hours.. only because he'd be there 24hrs if I let him LOL. So I'd have the 9-5 as 'don't interrupt daddy' time. kwim? But the type of businesses we run, the work is so flexible anyway.. there's not much 'actual' work to it. I just process the bills each month.. whenever I can fit it in, and DH watches the servers to make sure their ok. Any upgrades and maintenance to the servers is done after midnight anyway so as not to interrupt business hours for people's websites. So we'll probably have a BALL when we're setup enough for him to leave his day job :)

Laura - what kind of work is it? I must admit I find it quite hard to do my bookkeeping work (for clients) as that requires solid amounts of time to sit and work. I'm actually going to stop the bookkeeping coz it's too hard.. especially since we're trying for bub #2. I think it can depend on the work and how you can fit it in around your day with the kids.

I'm the same. I work around everything else, but I don't have people come to the house and being in the maternity industry, I don't really mind if people can hear my kids in the background when they call. I'm very free and easy, the only thing I'm paranoid about is my stock. It is safely locked away and my children aren't allowed anywhere near it.

I will be expanding in the near future and I will be working out of a separate building as we are doing a little bit of manufacturing, so that may take some manouvering - will probably do a couple of hours a night.

Thanks for the input everyone. Hubby actually needs a structured schedule and serious quiet time as he is a computer programmer /technician and is someone that can't really handle alot of noise. The major thing during the day will be for me to answer phones and deal with clients etc...... so most of what I do I can do around Talia. I will try and put what everyone has said into practice. Just don't know how you ladies keep up with everything. You are all superwomen.:clap:
Liz - my hubby is the same. His leisure time is computer time as well which is reallly annoying as you never know what he's doing. And he will say he is working on stuff in the background or waiting for stuff to download etc so he can continue with a job. I think he needs a new hobby...not just computers.:rolleyes:

Yeah - DH is Systems Admin... so he basically just needs to answer a few emails, and be available if something goes wrong. LOL. But he has to be in front of the computer apparently! But when he was working from home on regular days, I did try to get him to end his 'work' day at some point. Yes he stayed on teh computer.. but he was available to be interrupted to come and help with the dishes or something!!

TIME BLOCKING!!!!

I find it to be one of the most important things to get right. Otherwise everything bleeds into everything else and it feels like you are working ALL the time.
Have proper lunch breaks too.

I don't have to be in 9-5, but I put in 2-3 solid hours in the morning. I have put MItch into day care 2 days per week, he really loves it and I was worried he wouldn't get enough time outside the house as I don't really have to leave at all. I also get most of the weeks work done in those 2 days. It was just too hard sometimes, if I had an extended phone call, or composing workshops and poor Mitch got a bit sick of being on the backburner. It's hard to concentrate with mum mum mum mum mum in the background!
It's a total fallacy about working from home being "easy". You still have to put the time in and if anything you need to be way more disciplined with yourself. It can a while to get it right, but it's worth it!