Working from home has long seemed like the perfect solution for those who prefer slippers to heels and lounge suits to business suits. But, as many people discovered during the pandemic, creating a productive work environment among the daily routine of a busy household isn’t always all it’s cracked up to be.
Sure, you don’t have to get dressed if you don’t want to (Zoom meetings aside) and you’re on hand to deal with any domestic issues which arise throughout the day, but trying to keep your home and work life separate is vital if you want to stay sane in the former and gainfully employed in the latter.
With this in mind, we spoke to three people who have adapted their home or garden to accommodate a business to find out what alterations they made and how they are faring.
Box room office
Like many of us, Deirdre Doyle, who lives in Wicklow with her husband Mark and three children (Luke, Maggie and Charlie), started out working from home from her kitchen table.
“I initially started working in the kitchen where I had a desk in one corner of the room. But I found it really tricky to work from there and I also hated looking at my desk while I was cooking or eating,” she recalls.
While it suited the needs of her family at the time, as the children were younger so she could keep an eye on them, it wasn’t an ideal work environment.
So Doyle, who runs her business, The Cool Food School, from home, which teaches children about food and features simple cooking classes, looked for an alternative option.
Her daughter, Maggie, wanted to share a room, so by moving her out of her bedroom and into bunk beds in another bedroom, they freed up a room.
This box room was then repainted and Doyle moved her desk and all of her stock into it to create an office.
“I was able to use the existing storage unit in the bedroom but we had to get rid of the bed and some other furniture to give me more space,” she says.
So far, the situation is working out and everything is running smoothly – apart from some occasional interruptions from the kids looking for help with homework!
“Overall the move upstairs has been great, as it has allowed me to have some separation between home and work life,” she says.
‘Our house is home again’
James Byrne and his husband Eoin Houlihan live in Kildare where they run their online, sustainable living store www.faerly.ie
“Faerly was a lockdown project to fulfil a long-held dream which we never had the time or resources to do before and having so much time on our hands, we decided to go for it. The goal of the business is to help people to live with less plastic and fewer chemicals in their everyday products and also to promote small Irish makers and eco-conscious brands. So we sell everything from skincare to cleaning products as well as selling a lot of gift boxes. mostly with all Irish-made products,” says Byrne.
Byrne, who worked in marketing for Glanbia for a decade, dedicates his time solely to their new venture, while Houlihan also works as a counsellor and guidance teacher in a secondary school.
The couple originally ran the business from their house, but this quickly started to become a problem.
“When we started, we turned our bedroom into Faerly HQ and moved ourselves into the spare room (which was smaller). We had to clear all of the furniture out and replace it with storage shelving and a packing table. Then it started gradually filling up with stock and eventually the bedroom was jam-packed. We expanded to the office and added shelving there too, but it became a bit chaotic. We tried to keep all the stock to these two rooms, but we didn’t always succeed with it, so we also stored some items in Eoin’s mum’s house,” says Byrne.
However, the couple soon found this approach was becoming disruptive to their home life.
“We realised pretty quickly that Faerly was going to be more than just a side project, so we would need more storage,” says Byrne.
But they still wanted to keep the business at home in order to avoid paying rent, so they started looking into garden buildings.
“We eventually decided to go with a metal shed as they are quick to erect, well insulated and long-lasting and can easily be taken down in the future,” says Byrne.
The shed, bought from Shanette Sheds in Westmeath, was installed in half a day in late September 2021. It came in sections which are bolted together, and before it arrived, the couple had to install a concrete base for it. While the shed is made of steel and insulated panels, conscious of keeping warm while working, they decided to add floor, wall and ceiling insulation to the inside before they moved in.
“We wanted the inside to look less like a shed and have more of a finished interior,” recalls Byrne.
The additional work took the couple about six weeks, and they did as much of the work themselves as they could, with some “great help from family, especially Eoin’s brother Conor”.
Experts were called in for jobs like adding the electrics and lights, internet access and a security system, while they sourced flooring, furniture and things like counters and window blinds on either Freecycle or other adverts to keep the costs down and avoid buying new things.
The big move from the bedroom to the shed came last December, the busiest time of the year for Faerly.
“Now, I spend pretty much all of my working day in the shed and it’s both our office and stockroom. The difference it has made has been immense – our house is home again and for the most part “work” stays in the shed and I can physically close the door on it at the end of the day. The house is not overrun with boxes any more and it’s much easier to switch off,” says Byrne.
Keeping the business close to home has other rewards.
“Pre-pandemic I was spending an hour and a half of every day commuting, which isn’t extreme by any means, but I feel like I’ve won this time back,” says Byrne, adding that these days, his trip to work is just “around a hundred yards walk”.
Walk-in work
When Gillian Daly, who lives in South Dublin with her husband Anthony and two children Shannon and Ruairí, moved back from London in 2019, her goal was to set up her own PR business.
She wanted to set up the business, www.gilliandaly.com, from home, but because she didn’t want it to take over the spare bedroom, she decided to create an office in her wardrobe.
“I run a full-service PR and influencer marketing agency and because I tend to work with freelancers, I don’t need to have a large office space as most things can be done over Zoom and email. So, I created an office space in my walk-in wardrobe as I didn’t want to sacrifice a room in my house – with me being from Armagh and my husband from Kerry, we like to have plenty of spare room as we love to see visitors coming.”
Daly adapted the (wardrobe) room by moving furniture so that her workspace is on one side of it, with hanging space on the opposite wall.
“My desk is located adjacent to a window so I have lots of natural light flowing in and can gaze out at the Dublin Mountains in the background when I need inspiration,” she says. Black wall stickers on the wall give the illusion of a funky wallpaper print, and she keeps her desk clutter-free, with just her work essentials and flowers “to give a pop of pink”.
“Because me and my business are one and the same, it suits me that my office is in my wardrobe and I always look forward to getting to go to work in here – I feel very lucky that my career fits in so nicely with both my home and family life.”
The space is also useful when Daly is doing a press drop to journalists, as it offers storage space for PR product – away from the places that the children also use.
“It’s also where I create reels and other social media content- and when the camera is pointed at my work side of the room, people have no idea I’m in my closet – until now!”
