They are the morning rituals of any working couple. First the alarm clock, then the snooze button, then the alarm clock once again. And the shower and the coffee, of course, and then the kiss-goodbye-see-you-tonight parting as she heads left, he right.
But not down the street to the subway or into the garage to the car. Her office is in their spare bedroom. His is in the den.
Pre-dawn commutes, office politics and harsh fluorescent lighting have driven many a professional into the extra room off the kitchen.
The National Association for the Cottage Industry in Chicago, a research and advocacy group for people who work at home, counts nearly 22 million home offices nationwide. And the two-office home, in which both spouses or roommates operate separate businesses under one roof, may be an emerging trend, said Coralee Kern, the association’s president.
“There is no question that there has been a steady growth in income-producing home offices over the years,” Kern said. “And now, when there’s concern that a husband can lose his job at 2 p.m. on a Tuesday and his wife can lose hers the next week, the trend is growing even faster.”
But are the familiar work-at-home issues of isolation, lack of feedback and motivation compounded or alleviated when there is another voice at the end of the hall? Does sharing bedrooms at night entitle people to require their mates to fill in as ready receptionists during the day? Does “for better or worse” mean “always there at lunch, regardless”?
The double home office presents questions about space, both the physical and emotional varieties, and the arrangements people make to preserve that space take as many shapes as there are businesses, or lifestyles. But while the methods couples use to divvy up square footage and ensure respect of turf vary, there is some common ground.
“This is not usually done by people who don’t like each other,” said Barbara Kalt-Goldner, a licensed clinical social worker in Chicago who works with individuals and couples.
“This is usually done by people who think the idea of seeing a spouse all day is not so bad. But two working at home in the same house, trying to have a relationship around that-that can be really . . . well, interesting.” Some work-at-home couples have separate offices, others share an office. Some keep their businesses apart, some help each other out.
Efficiency pays
On the utility table just outside the kitchen in the second-floor apartment in an old Victorian house in Portland, Me., a phone rings.
“You have reached Edgemont Enterprises and Fitness Yoga,” the recording announces. An international marketing and management consulting company and an exercise studio right at the same desk. The same chair. The same bookcase. The same computer, which is also shared with Oisette the cat, who naps afternoons away on top of the monitor.
But the proprietors are out. Elaine de Greck, 45, and Robert Monteux, 40, former ballet dancers who have been living and working together for four years, are off meeting clients-Monteux with small businesses involved in sending used clothing to the former Soviet republics, and de Greck with classical yoga students in leotards and tights. When they are both in, though, the Macintosh hums from 7 in the morning until midnight.
“We’ve got a certain amount of space,” Monteux said, “a certain amount of time and resources to use, and we’re sharing them very efficiently.”
Monteux and de Greck share everything in the office, which is confined to a small area behind the kitchen. The rest of the apartment is for living, not working.
Molding a schedule
An entirely different dynamic goes on in a 100-year-old clapboard barn in Ipswich, Mass., a 40-minute drive up the coast from Boston. Each morning, Barbara and Wayne King walk through the glass-enclosed porch that connects their early 1800s farm house to the three-level barn in the back. When they reach the barn, Wayne King heads upstairs, Barbara King down.
For 17 years, Barbara, 49, has run Ocmulgee Pottery and Gallery in the barn, a light gray New England classic. Originally a home to cows and goats, it now houses a ceramics gallery on the second floor, a studio on the first and the office of Wayne King, 50, on the third. The two have been married for 27 years.
Wayne, a structural engineer who worked for 21 years in Cambridge, Mass., does not miss driving to work in the dark, arriving home late for odd-hour dinners and enduring the pressure to make money for somebody else. The transition a year ago to the top floor of the barn, which he renovated himself, was made easier by his wife’s example.
“I was prepared mentally,” King said. “I was ready to go. But my biggest fear was just being able to break into the market. But seeing Barbara’s business build and build to the point where she may even be doing better than me, well, that has given me the confidence to do it too.”
These days both Kings are busy with their work and do not see much of each other during the day. “He comes for a visit, for coffee since we keep the pot down here,” Barbara said with a laugh. “He probably drinks three or four cups a day.” Her studio employs three to four people and holds classes on some evenings, providing Wayne with the hubbub he sometimes misses. “It’s not a distraction, it’s a break,” he said. “There is one man, though, who comes in the evening and is a chocolate maker. And he always brings something. That’s a distraction, believe me.”
The barn is equipped with two phone lines, two answering machines, two computers and two desks. The Kings have their own working areas and rely little on each other to keep their respective businesses going.
“Setting up a business without a person to lean on, to go to the store to do an errand for you, makes it less likely personal problems will arise,” said Don Schwerzler, a director of the Family Business Institute, an Atlanta-based consulting company to family-run industries.
There are arrangements, though, in which couples spend considerable chunks of time helping each other out.
A couple in Shoreham, N.Y., have set up a system in which the woman seems more involved in the man’s work than he is in hers, partly because of the layout of their home, partly because of the nature of the businesses.
The woman, Barbara Branca, 45, writes children’s science books in a spare room on the ground floor of her Cape Cod-style house. Her husband of seven years, James Cook, 38, is an artist who sells his science fiction- and horror story-inspired sculptures through a mail-order business in the basement. Branca often helps with the packing and shipping.
“It was Halloween,” Branca described, “and it was very hectic for James. But I was trying to get a manuscript out and also packing for him. I’ve got to tell you I was kind of being whiney. But he brought me flowers. I was employee of the month.”
Cook sometimes takes care of his wife’s electronic equipment. “He’s my office aide,” she said.
Branca begins writing early, after getting Samantha, their 5-year-old, on the school bus. She works until about 2 p.m., an hour or so after Cook awakens. He works from midnight until dawn.
Branca said, “James has got people in here traipsing through my office to get the hydrostone (the plasterlike material in which he works) in the afternoon, so I work in the morning.”
Despite their mismatched schedules, the couple always has dinner with their daughter.
“Having both of us at home is good,” Cook said, “because we can alternately spend time with Samantha. The bad part is that sometimes there is friction that comes from always seeing this other person that you’re married to.”
The type of work being done at home determines, to a great extent, how space is divided or shared. Unlike Branca and Cook, whose hydrostone makes its way throughout the house regardless of the hour, people with material-less and strictly scheduled careers can have more control over their surroundings.
Room for therapy
For 10 years, Todd Lief, an organizational and creative consultant, has been working in the former bedroom of a grown child in his Chicago townhouse.
Eighteen months ago, his wife, Jo, 55, a psychotherapist, opened an office at home. At that time, Lief, 57, remodeled the basement, adding white built-in cabinets and drawers, ledges and shelves for books and papers and places for visitors to sit.
“I was determined to make it seem not like a basement,” he said.
Jo, meanwhile, transformed her husband’s previous bedroom quarters into a comfortable, upholstered, softly shaded room conducive to talk. And despite her initial fears of excessive togetherness and isolation (“I actually thought I might just wear a muumuu and never emerge out the front door,” she said), Jo added her schedule keeps their work days separate.
Her husband knows when her sessions begin and end and is careful not to enter or leave the house at the same time as a client.
The schedule also helps the Liefs create specific non-work hours, which are often lost when one is always “at work.”
“We act as if we were working in offices elsewhere and separate work from social life,” Todd said.
They go to a health club together in the morning and have dinner at home or with friends at night.
“Someone has to formalize the separation,” Schwerzler said. “Typically, the entrepreneur doesn’t watch clocks well.”
For the Liefs and for other successful work-at-home couples, preparation was essential.
“We spent a lot of time talking before Jo came home,” Lief said. “But my wife is a psychotherapist, let’s face it. We’re always examining ourselves, seeing how we are, whether we are too smeared together or too totally separate. So we watch. The best part, now, is that I kind of like knowing she’s here.”
