A well-functioning desk/office can make all the difference if you want to have a productive day! If your desk is too small or too large it’s hard to make progress. If you don’t have the right storage system, it’s hard to find anything. And if you can’t find your phone, things can fall apart quickly. Here are our Fab5 office products to help make your life easier and more productive:
Joanne
- Stand Up Desk: I worked at a large wooden table for years and last year finally made the leap to a stand up desk. I’ll be honest – I don’t stand all that much. It’s really tiring! This desk goes up and down with a simple push of a button so I can decide whether to face a project standing up or sitting down. It’s not that expensive and I put it together by myself in about 10 minutes. My husband even bought some for his office!
- Phone Stand: I kept losing my phone in piles of papers and magazines and one time I lost it and finally found it in a file folder that I had filed! Chrissie told me about this phone stand so now my phone is front and center, and I’m not wasting time looking for it.
- Moleskin Notebooks. I still love to put pen to paper. See #5 below. Each year I buy a new hard covered book of lined paper and use it throughout the year to take notes and make to do lists. It’s a smallish size – 5×8 – so it can easily fit in a purse or tote. I’ve also used these Red diaries – I have 10 years of them lined up on my book shelf – but didn’t really need a page a day and I like the size and weight of the Moleskin. You can get them with paper that is plain, lined, grid, or dated. Whatever works for you!
- Spinner: It’s a ‘pen’demic in my office. I have hundreds of ballpoint and gel pens, mechanical and lead pencils, fine point and regular sharpies, Paper Mate Flair pens, highlighters in all the fun colors, and pencils in all the colors of the rainbow and more. I organize them in this round spinner rack so I can get my paws on whatever writing implement I need at the moment.
- Blue Light Blocker Readers: Too much blue light exposure from all our screen time can cause eye strain, headaches, and blurred vision and can affect your learning and working efficiency. We don’t want that!! The blue light filter lens in these readers features a special coating that restricts blue light from passing through the lenses. There are various color and magnification options and I buy two at a time!
- Bonus: Zoom: I love having a Zoom subscription. I tried the free hour sessions but I was always looking at the clock count down. I use it for work, yes, but I also use it to keep up with family and friends and it makes connecting much more fun!
Chrissie
- Second Monitor: I do everything on a laptop and having a separate/second monitor on my desk changed MY LIFE! I was shocked at how relatively cheap the monitors are (as in everything, there’s a range) I didn’t go high end and got a 27” and wouldn’t go any smaller than that, and you could go bigger. It’s easy to set it up so your mouse or trackpad just goes seamlessly between your laptop and the other screen. It is game changing because, in addition to having a large screen, you can have email and calendar on one and internet on the other, for example, or whatever works for you/ what you’re working on. I’ve been known to put a Netflix movie on one while editing photos on the other! You will need one of these HDMI connectors to connect the monitor to your laptop so make sure to order one at the same time (and I like this one as it has lots of ports to plug other things in as well)! You also might want to raise your monitor up (so it’s higher than your laptop screen if you have that placed in front of it). If you work on a laptop at a desk YOU NEED to increase your ‘screen real estate’ with a monitor!
- Big pad of paper/blotter for under laptop: I love having a place to take note/doodle/write stuff down when I’m at my desk, and I love having a big ‘pad’/blotter that I set my laptop on so basically my laptop is surrounded by a big pad a paper at all times. Every day I take notes, scratch ideas down etc as my paper is always there. I may not tear off the sheet for days or weeks, depending on how much I use it. I know this isn’t for everyone but I LOVE it. And if anyone else in my family uses my desk I notice that they scratch stuff on it all the time as well.
- A really good pen: I got my favorite pen as a college graduation gift and I still use it every day and love love love it. It just feels so good in my hand (perfect weight etc) and writes so well and obviously lasts a long time! It sits on the ‘pad/blotter’ noted above and is used for the daily doodling, note taking, list making etc. Makes a great gift!
- WHOOSH Screen Cleaner: I rely on this stuff to clean my glasses and all my screens. It ROCKS. It comes in smaller sizes (good for in your purse for your glasses cleaning) but the big one is much more economical (and you can use it to refill your smaller ones). All sizes come with cleansing clothes. Supposedly this is the only product Apple uses in its stores to clean its screens.
- Candles: I like lighting a candle at my desk every day. What scent is obviously a personal choice but I find a mint scent is really an ‘awake’ and fresh one for an office and I love this one, burning on my desk now as I write this!
- Bonus. Office Chair. We all know a great office chair is key for productivity. For me I like having arms and I like it going up pretty high (some don’t raise up enough for my liking as I’m short waisted). I personally haven’t sat in this one, but it looks like it checks all my boxes, plus is good looking (not black and boring), is super economical and has over a thousand 5 star reviews.
Check out all of our office recs in our Home Office section of the site.
