I’m mother and a business woman. I’m a wife. I’m a USA Today bestselling author of 56 books with over six million copies sold. I’m currently on tour, cyber and physical, with my husband, Tim, with our new book, It Happened On Maple Street. It’s our true life love story that shows first hand the healing power of love.

And I am most definitely home based. I’ve been working from home for more than nineteen years. And I’ve learned a lot. Probably more than I realize. I have found a way to run a successful career with only a home based office. Today I want to share with you four of the things that have worked for me.

1. Get a Fed-Ex account! It’s free to open the account and it opens the world to you – brings the world to your doorstep. You need to get something to someone by tomorrow? Just pick up the phone and leave your package outside your front door. They do the rest. They’ll even drop off packaging boxes, envelopes and labels, which are free of charge. They do further out runs, too. You don’t have to use the overnight service. I just tend to be in overnight necessary situations a good bit of the time.
2. Set hours for yourself and stick to them. I found this one to be vitally important. Home contains life. And life contains all kinds of important things to do. They will call to you, distract you, drag you away unless you pencil yourself out from them to go to work and then go to work when you pencil yourself out. Being able to work my own hours is a benefit of working at home. Being able to be flexible is a huge benefit. But like anything else in life, too much of a good thing can turn really bad. Flexibility and the ability to walk away if the phone rings can end up robbing you of every hour in the day and then no work gets done. Tim (my husband, the love of my life and co-author of our new release, It Happened On Maple Street) and I worked out a plan that works for us. When he leaves the house for work everyday (he’s an engineer) I got to the office in our home. I work while he works. I leave the office to change loads of laundry. Or to answer the door. If one of our kids needs something (they’re all grown) I schedule myself out, but otherwise I work while he is at work. This was practical for us because when he isn’t at work, I want to be with him! And when I have to schedule myself out during the day, I make up those hours in the evening. That’s when Tim gets his time in our office taking care of his part of our writing responsibilities.
3. Set Your Boundaries. This is a make you or break you thing. In our society, a woman at home is free game. She’s there to nurture, to call, to lean on, to borrow from, to ask assistance from, to call on, to visit. She’s there to cook and to clean and take the dogs to the vet. To fix skinned knees and find the lost cat and run for gas when the neighbors car runs out. She always there. And the people in her life know that. It’s just a fact. You need something, she’s there. And most women that I know cannot ignore the call when it comes. A child, a friend, a family member, a neighbor, a spouse needs something and it is woman’s internal drive to be there. To tend to that need. I want to be there, to be needed, to tend to those who need me. And I have to write four books a year. I have to do book signings and blog tours and interviews. I have to write articles and answer questions and get through hundreds of emails. I have to schedule and be on Facebook and tweet and judge contests. I have to find at least eight hours in a day to work. It’s just a fact. I bring income to this family and that isn’t going to happen if I don’t work. Now…when I say set your boundaries, I don’t mean (yet) that you set them for other people. You have to set them for yourself. You have to determine, in your mind and heart, who you are and what you are going to accomplish. You have to know that if you have to work eight hours a day, you are going to have to say no to some requests. You have to determine your priorities and know which requests are automatic yes’ and then learn to say no to the rest. And once you’ve done that, you have to make those boundaries clear to those in your life. If you don’t know your boundaries you can’t teach them. And if you don’t teach others what your boundaries are, they can’t possibly respect them. When I was raising my daughter she knew what hours were fully hers and which ones were mine. Unless the house was on fire or she was bleeding I didn’t come out of the story during my work time. I set her up with a desk in my office, her own computer, so we could be close, but she understood that when I was working I was off limits. She was a smart girl though. It didn’t take her long to figure out that if she asked for permission to do something while I was in the story, I’d usually just mumble a yes, without ever hearing the question. That lasted until she asked to do something that would have been a ‘no’ at any other time. After that we set new boundaries. She wasn’t allowed to ask until I was done working when she wanted permission to do something.
4. Create Your Space. Set aside space in your home as your work space. Have this be your ‘office’ whether it’s a corner of a room or a separate room. And then keep yourself out of your office when you aren’t on your business hours. Because just as your life will take over your work time, suffocate it to the point of not getting any work done, working from home can have the opposite effect as well. The work will suffocate your ‘life’ time if you let it. I love what I do and the creative muse is very kind to me and it wasn’t difficult for it to talk me into sticking around with it for longer and longer periods of time. I got to the point that I was working until two or three in the morning. My life suffered. And so I learned to separate my work time from my home time. To do that I had to separate my work space from my home space. If I was in the dining room where my computer lived, or walking through the dining room, the computer called out to me. I’d gravitate toward it, only for a minute. A minute that turned into hours. So I separated work space from home space. And I enter work space only when I intend to work. I found that family members then also associate me differently when I am in my work space. I’m at work when I’m there. They don’t bother me unless they have to. And when I’m not in the office, I’m available to them. They can count on that. It made them much less resentful of my time spent at work. I also found that the separation between work space and home space made it easier for me to get right at the work during work time. Like a Pavlovian dog, I know that when I’m in the office, it’s time to work. And its easier to relax on my off work time now, too. I know that when I’m not in the office, I’m not at work. My home life is really home life again.

This post is brought to you as part of the It Happened On Maple Street International Blog Tour. For a complete tour schedule visit www.tarataylorquinn.com. All blog commenters are added to the weekly basket list. Gift Basket given each week to one randomly drawn name on the list.

If you or someone you know is a victim of domestic violence, or if you suspect someone is, please contact www.thehotline.org, or call, toll free, 24/7, 1-800-799-7233 (SAFE) or 1-800-787-3224 (TTY). The call can be anonymous and is always confidential. There is not one second of life that is worth wasting.

Next tour stop, Tuesday May 3, Chapter’s Books: http://community.indigo.ca//find/community-posts/1.html.

To get your copy of It Happened On Maple Street, visit your favorite bookseller, or www.maplestreetbook.com.

Don’t miss The Chapman Files! Still available at: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=Tara+Taylor+Quinn.

It Happened On Maple Street is available on Kindle and Nook, too! http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0757315682/ref=s9_simh_gw_p14_d2_i1?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-2&pf_rd_r=0SKJ9D86BB5XG2BPT4MV&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=470938631&pf_rd_i=507846; http://search.barnesandnoble.com/It-Happened-on-Maple-Street/Tara-Taylor-Quinn/e/9780757315688/?itm=15&USRI=tara+taylor+quinn.

Dr. Amy Johnson

I’m a mom, running a home-based business. And I share home base with a Stay at Home Dad.

Am I insane? Climbing the walls? Headed for divorce?

I know what you’re thinking. “She must live in a mansion with a private business wing, a separate play room for the baby, and a pimped out man cave for that SAHD saint.”

Um…not exactly. Read on. Here’s how it really looks.

My business is happiness. I’m a Psychologist and Master certified Life Coach and I work with clients to create a life they design.

My job is to help people do big things. For example, with support, accountability, and an amazingly effective step-by-step system, one of my clients finally left the corporate job she’s hated for years and started her own custom bakery. Another worked with me to implement changes that led to her tripling her previous income.

As part of my happiness mission, I write a popular blog and a free weekly eZine called Enlightenment for Unenlightened People, where I give everyday people strategies and mindsets to help them live more joy-filled and successful lives.

I work with people all over the world. As I write this, I have clients in Kosovo, Australia, the English countryside, Hong Kong, and 8 U.S. states. On any given day, I’m leading seminars and group coaching via teleconference, strategizing with clients through email and online chat, and working with my private clients in regular old fashioned phone calls. Or I’m writing. Lots and lots of writing. Blogging, writing enlightenment tips for my eZine, putting together ebooks and manuals for clients, blogging, more blogging…

And, I do it all from a bedroom in my two bed, two bath 1900 square foot condo in Chicago. My bedroom doubles as my office and let me tell you, it’s a room in a crowded house. There’s Pepsi (8 year old yorkie), Buddha (3 year old yorkie), Willow (11 month old daughter), and Ora (uber supportive husband and Stay at Home Dad extraordinaire). Plus me, and my lists of things to do everyday.

Saving the world from my bedroom. It wasn’t always this way, though.

Before we had our 11 month old, I had all 1900 glorious square feet to myself while my husband worked outside of the home. Well, I shared with Pepsi and Buddha but they didn’t take up much space. So the tight quarters are a relatively new thing.

It won’t be this way for ever, either. We’re trying to sell our little mansion just as soon as the market cooperates, and I will have a beautiful, large, private office in our next home. I can’t tell you how often I remind myself that our situation is temporary.

But even now, it’s not as bad as it may sound. I enjoy the same perks as any Work at Home Mom. I get to sneak peeks at my daughter toddling around; stick my head out of the “office” when I hear her laughter filling the house. I’ve been able to nurse her for 11 months while working full-time and I haven’t missed a “first” anything.

I get to spend more time with my family since I don’t have to commute in Chicago traffic. And although I also don’t fall into the sweat pants and t-shirt stereotype*, I do get to wear my favorite jeans or cute yoga pants most days.

The typical challenges that WAHMS share apply to me, as well. I, too, am guilty of taking the laptop to bed and of sometimes choosing the Smartphone over sex or sleep**.

I often feel trapped in the bedroom. If I run to the kitchen to refill my glass of water and the baby sees me, we’re in trouble. Don’t get me wrong—I love that she wants to be near me but it breaks my heart to feel my husband peeling her out of my arms while she cries “mama!”, all so that I can go jump on a teleconference. Not to mention my paranoia about the psychological damage this constant peeling may cause. (On the bright side, she’ll only have to walk down the hallway to my “office” if she needs some psychological help dealing with her separation anxiety. Urg…)

To cope, I constantly strive for ways of mixing things up. I’m lucky to have occasional access to an outside office and I work from there at times. Like when I’m recording something that really shouldn’t have barking or crying in the background, or when I have a full day of back-to-back phone calls.

I also arrange my schedule so that I can do most of my writing and admin tasks from my favorite coffee shop. There’s actually quite a bit of variety in my typical week.

With my husband working at home too, our space is sacred. He’s excellent at keeping things clean and clutter-free during the day so that we can relax together in a nice environment in the evenings. Our nightly walks are our version of scotch and a valium—much needed escapes, absolutely essential to our sanity.

This set up might sound crazy to some, but I’m guessing that most readers know what I mean when I say the benefits greatly outweigh the challenges. Especially since we all like and respect each other as much as any family can.

By the way…if you know anyone looking to buy a 2 BD/2 BA condo in Chicago, send them my way.

About the Author:
Dr. Amy Johnson helps people create a life they design. She is co-author of the book Changes of the Heart available on Amazon.com and her coaching has been featured in several national publications and in a documentary film. She regularly speaks to audiences about cultivating success and happiness.

To read her blog or sign up for her free eZine, visit www.DrAmyJohnson.com