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I was driving the other day and suddenly thought how luxurious it felt to focus on one task. All I had to do was drive safely! In fact, it’s the law that I pay attention to the road at all times. What a cakewalk!

Multitasking isn’t easy. Any mom, whether she gets a paycheck for her work or not, will tell you that. But fortunately, it looks like there are some creative ideas to help us handle it all.

Cubes and Crayons is a workplace that’s meant for solo entrepreneurs, telecommuters, consultants and others who could work from home but find they need a dedicated workspace. But what makes it stand out is the fact that it has onsite, licensed childcare. That, plus the flexibility in usage, make it an idea whose time has come.

The San Francisco Chronicle recently did an article on this new spin on office culture. Two quotes from the article say a lot about how much the service is needed:

“"The beauty of this is that you don't have to commit to a full-time nanny or to renting office space for 40 hours a week," said Chan, who spent about four hours last Tuesday at Cubes & Crayons.
"It's so nice not to sit in Starbucks with a pile of 40 compositions next to me," said Mary Cudahy, a UC Berkeley lecturer who brings her 14-month-old son to Cubes & Crayons when she needs to grade papers for a few hours.”

The cost is $20 for half a day using just the office space, or $20 per hour if you use both the office space and the childcare. It can be steep—the cost is $400 per week if you’re using more than 31 hours of combined office and childcare.

But this is in Silicon Valley, so most of the target clientele are telecommuting pros. Ideally, the idea will catch on and become so widespread that a range of prices opens up and a range of workers can use this.

Really, that gets me daydreaming. How cool would it be to go to a supermarket with professional licensed childcare for the workers—and the shoppers? I probably wouldn’t use the service every time, but I could imagine there will be days when I wish I had an extra set of hands at the supermarket to help with the kids (#2 is due this fall!). And I know there are supermarket employees – and many other non-office workers – who would benefit greatly from such a convenient arrangement.

I love seeing these creative work arrangements popping up. I can’t wait to see how they grow and change as more and more people make use of them. We may never fully end the juggling and multi-tasking of family life (and maybe wouldn’t want to), but options like this ease the way.