Thanks to Shedworking for the heads up on an interesting article in the Times Online called Home working isn’t the luxury its cracked up to be.

While this is from an England point of view. The article does have maybe one good point. Just haven’t found it yet. What I don’t like about it is the photo they used in the article and what they mention as downsides. It shows an attractive blonde sitting on her butt, with her legs under her living room coffee table working. While this is one of the benefits of working at home. I do wish more of the mainstream articles would show what some home offices really look like.

I have seen some that look more professional than some you might see in a “downtown” office. The reporter goes on to give us some of the downsides:

The downside is that you will miss out on all the stuff you get in an old-fashioned office: the nice stationery cupboard, the gossip, the camaraderie, the chance to escape your family, eating out for lunch and an office manager to mend the blinds. Also, chances are that you will probably have proper furniture to hand. You will not be sitting on a Lloyd Loom chair at a low-slung coffee table, a rickety Habitat desk, or (as in my case) a horizontal slab of plastic. You will have proper lighting, a Powwow water cooler and an ergonomically designed, kidney-shaped leather-topped desk with beautifully smooth sliding drawers. You will have an Anglepoise. Hell, you will have air-con.

Someone needs to educate this reporter. I have gossip, twitter. I have camaraderie with iChat, Skype and video chats with some great people. I usually have at least one of those conversations on a daily basis. We have email to bounce things off of each other too. I have yet to feel isolated working at home.

Escape the family, good grief, one of the best benefits of working at home is that I get to spend more time with my family. If I want to “escape” them, I go to my favorite coffee shop. And instead of eating lunch out with some pain in the butt co-worker, I get to have lunch with my wife. Which brings me to the next point, why would I need an office manager to mend the blinds, when I married the best handy-woman on the face of the earth.

Furniture, I have it. I have a great desk setup we made ourselves out of three solid core doors. The legs are made of pipe and the entire setup cost us less than $300.00. And I don’t sit on a Lloyd Loom chair with my legs under the coffee table. I sit in a Leap chair. Which I plan to replace sometime this year with an Aeron Chair.

Here is my message to Mainstream Media, talk to some true Home Office Warriors and see how we run successful home based businesses. Don’t discount us for working at home and certainly don’t discount what we have available to us for offices, office furniture and equipment.