Creating A Workable Home Office Can Be Daunting if you've left the storefront behind and set up a business in a second bedroom or a corner of the dining room. How do you carve out a niche from your living space that's suitable for your business? Is it possible (without the help of interior designers, Feng Shui experts, and Donald Trump's budget) to create a stylish, well-executed home office? In a word, yes.

Tonya Fitzpatrick's office is carved out of a corner of the couple's large living room.

Home-based agents of various backgrounds reveal that, while the details and processes of carving out their home offices were diverse, essential components were similar.

Terri Maldonado—"The Cruise Gal" ( http://www.cruisegal.com/)—runs a wildly successful operation, with 36 agents (all home-based) working under her. A little more than a decade ago, she took a risk and embraced the urge to be at home with her child. Having never been in the travel business, she "didn't have pre-conceived ideas about whether it would be easy or hard to have a travel career at home," she says.

Sometimes, a lack of precedence can be liberating, so Maldonado got to work building up her agency out of a small bedroom with no closet. The lack of storage space proved unbearable, so on a friend's recommendation, she phoned California Closets and built a highly efficient unit of built-in file cabinets, shelves and a desktop. When Maldonado's husband retired, the couple moved to Phoenix, AZ, where she essentially repeated this process—this time with more space, experience and money.

Corky Champagne-Einersen's office was a disorganized mess.

Much as corporate employees move from a cubicle to a corner office, Maldonado moved into a large bedroom with a closet and adjacent bathroom. Today, she says, "I have an office suite in my house."

Like Maldonado, California-based Lori Pelentay of Kensington Cruises decided to mingle business with child rearing. "I am a single mom with two young children, so it's important for me to run my business from home," she says. Pelentay has two home-based jobs—one booking cruises and another as director of a direct sales company. Her office is small, but it works, she says, "because I can close the door. It's too hard to do it in the corner of the living room or bedroom. This way, my work can take up the whole room, and I don't have to worry about it, no matter how messy it is!"

During the four years she has worked from home, her office, like her business, has evolved, but she lists her essentials: a good computer with lots of memory, high-speed Internet connection, a brochure organizer, file cabinets, CLIA's manual, a printer/fax machine and a wireless headset (for more information on technology for the home-based business). Pelentay neglects to mention a desk or chair; with all this mobile technology, she works all over town.

Now, her stylish space helps her sell travel without missing a beat.

Although she has no children, Tonya Fitzpatrick of Bronze World Travel does have a dog named Quincy, her company's "mascot." Such quirky traits help make Fitzpatrick's home-based agency a success. Fitzpatrick and her husband started the business about a year ago upon leaving jobs as legal advisors. Unlike Maldonado and Pelentay, Fitzpatrick's office occupies a section of her spacious living room, and is colorfully decorated with her father-in-law's paintings.