Updated October 15, 2009

By Molly Hallman, Payscale.com

Can you imagine how simple your life would be if you never had to drive to work? If you have the self-discipline to work from home, the right opportunity could help you get back those commute hours and gain some extra time each day to do whatever you want. If you're wondering where you can find such a job in a waning economy, here are seven companies hiring for work from home right now.

Lynette Mendez, 43, Holyoke, Mass.

By Beth Kowitt

Lynette Mendez wears pink sweaters and recently took in an unwanted cat. She is a mother hen who shuttles her daughter, Cheramie, to her after-school job and picks up her kids' friends from work. So it's hard to picture Mendez decked out in camouflage, scaling walls or firing M-16s. But that's what she'll be doing as soon as the paperwork goes through. Despite having a master's degree in accounting, she can't find a job - so she has joined the U.S. Army Reserve.

By Tiffany Miller, special to PayScale.com

Massage therapists have a look about them. They're usually young, cute, in good shape -- and often blonde.

Meghan Green is no different. The 29-year-old massage therapist eats a gluten-free diet and swims every weekday morning at 6 a.m. She's consistent and confident. So confident, in fact, that she started her own business in New York City - something that few New Yorkers have the guts to do.

By Anthony Balderrama, CareerBuilder.com writer

Depending on where you work and whom you work with, the words "sexy" and "job" shouldn't share a sentence. Even if you check all romantic notions at the door when you punch your time card, not everyone does.

Plenty of people are just as -- or more -- attractive as the profession they choose. Not just the obvious picks, such as athletes, doctors or models, but also some whose attractive quotients rise when they're on the clock.

Here are 10 careers that have more sex appeal than you probably realize:

Rachel Zupek, CareerBuilder.com writer

At 2 a.m., most workers are asleep in their beds, blissfully unaware that their alarm clocks will sound in a few short hours. But for 41 percent of Americans this is the time of day is when they are most productive, according to a 2005 poll by the National Sleep Foundation.