Maybe you’ve dreamt about working from home: Flexible hours! Taking calls in pajamas! Finishing a project while dinner cooks in the oven! Then you take a job that offers more freedom, or you forge your own way with a small business. Suddenly, the easy routine of an office job vanishes as you attempt to create your own workplace.

This is uncharted territory. In 1997 only seven percent of the employed population worked from home; today that number tops twenty percent. It’s not only entrepreneurs and small business owners who make their office at home. Employees of corporations are also joining the movement, finding out that their productivity increases in tandem with flexibility. As demand for freelance contractors explodes, artists are leaving office jobs to pursue their craft full-time. And if you work in a creative industry, you likely spend at least a portion of your day working at home (or haunting local coffee shops).