Go to Work in Your Pajamas
Save money and time by commuting to your living room.

When Scott and Emily Santoro began renovating their living space on Great Jones Street a decade ago, they had hoped to cut their time riding the subway to work.

Now the couple may just have one of the best commutes in Manhattan.

It’s just a short trip down a spiral staircase to Worksight, the graphic design firm which has its headquarters in the two-floor NoHo loft they share with their sons.

The industrial-chic office features a custom-designed kitchen table that doubles as a conference table, sleek drafting stations, rolling steel cabinets and other blue collar-by-way-of-SoHo touches (Scott comes from a family of plumbers). Despite a set-up worthy of Metropolitan Home, the two put a folksy Norman Rockwell spin on their situation: "We like to think that we're a mom and pop shop and we live above the store."

Photo by Rex Dittman

A different take on the living upstairs/working downstairs setup can be found in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn, where musician Elliott Carlson composes songs at a gear-piled desk which fits compactly underneath the loft bed in his tiny studio apartment. "I was trying to make a living as a musician," he said, "and the most expensive part was going into a studio, so I decided to buy my own studio and set it up here." With his MacG4 loaded up with ProTools software, a couple of mikes, guitars, sound modules, and amplifiers, Carlson spends 10-12 hours a day recording music (mostly catchy acoustic rock) for licensing in film and TV, making demos for bands, and even producing the occasional voice-over track (the last one he did was for a Spanish-language calling card company). While he often works until three in the morning, he does the loudest part of his job – the recording – during the day while his neighbors are at their 9-5 jobs.

"Obviously,” he says, "I don't have room to play drums so I add those in electronically."

And while he says he wouldn’t mind a little more separation between his work and personal space, he says he can’t beat the convenience of his set-up. “I love having it all right here.”

For Dr. Naomi Schechter, a clinical psychologist on the Upper West Side, separating the two is a necessity and she relies on actual physical design elements to split her workspace from her home space. She sees an average of 8 patients a day in the office in her pre-war apartment, and utilizes folding screens to divide the waiting room and office area of her practice from her personal quarters. Despite her efforts, she's not sure her patients are able to resist peeking around the screens. "You know, no one mentions it, and I don't ask," she says laughing.

While her office -- much like Sigmund Freud's home office in Vienna -- is chock full of plants, Oriental carpets, framed artwork and antiquities ("healing objects," she describes) she did tailor the character of the room differently from the rest of her apartment. “The comfort aspect is an important thing in a therapist’s office. I try to create a place where you feel safe going into yourself and letting go.”

“I’m quite a color person. I have a red wall in the living room, but the office has quieter, more neutral colors. Earth tones. One wall is a light spring green that I like very much. It’s the wall that I face, and I find it very soothing.” (An important consideration given that she can spend up to 7 hours a day looking at that very wall).

Schechter’s West End office's best visual characteristic, however, may be its sweeping view of the Hudson River. She finds it a major improvement over the space she used to share in the ground floor of the same building where the street noise was often "distracting" to her patients.

Working from home does bring in a whole new set of distractions. Children are a big one. The Santoros have found it crucial to hire a babysitter for their 2-and-a-half year old Ellis to keep him occupied while they work.

“When Emily was pregnant with Ellis,” says Scott, “she really thought she would just be able to have him on her lap and work and he would play and we would all spend the whole day together…. It took us a while to realize he couldn’t be down here with us during the day. He would just start going through the drawers and pulling papers off the desk…We couldn’t get any work done.”

Now that they’ve created a separation with their son between worktime and playtime, the Santoros find themselves much more productive during office hours. And now, adds Emily, “it’s a special treat to get to see him during the day.” Scott welcomes the breaks with his son as a chance to stretch his legs. "If it weren't for him, we'd probably just be sitting there for hours."

Carlson, the musician, has his own challenges with workspace distractions, waging a constant battle against noise. His recordings have been disrupted by “everything from toilets flushing to car radios blasting.” Without any soundproofing, he has the best luck shutting his windows while he works, but admits that in the summer months, it can make his apartment unbearable. He’s also not crazy about being cooped up in his studio. "You get so much done, but you feel like a hermit."

Yet despite minor complaints -- "You can't call in sick," Emily Santoro says wearily -- no one has any plans to get a separate office anytime soon, citing their flexible hours and economic benefits as major perks which keeps them working from home. But while many may have eliminated a time-sucking commute, they make up for it at the desk. Still, Carlson says, that for him, “the time flies by.” And for Scott, work and life may overlap but he doesn’t mind. “It’s part of our identity. It's not a chore. When I’m working for myself, I’m glad to be able to put the extra effort into projects to get them done.

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