Office furniture and storage
Desks
This is probably your most important piece of office furniture. Simple, flat, rectangular surfaces could be your best bet. These allow a degree of flexibility to accommodate design changes in the future: plain desk surfaces, for example, have proved to have worked best in the evolution of computer screens from the cathode ray tube to flat panel monitors.
A simple and efficient desk can be made using two half-size filing cabinets (two-drawer) set apart to provide a kneehole, and covered with a flat surface, made for example of plywood or laminated (or veneered) MDF.
Your choice of desk will, however, very much depend on your working practices: what equipment you need to keep permanently on it, what you need to spread out on it, what needs to be within easy reach, and so on. In any case, there are countless commercially-made desks, at all prices, catering for a huge range of uses and demands. For instance, some have shelving or cupboards attached; and pull-out surfaces, available in many desk designs, can allow you to temporarily extend your usable work-surface area.
Chairs
If you are going to spend hours in your office chair, get a good one – one that has good back support and adjustable height. You should aim to sit at your desk with your back, upper legs and lower legs all more or less at right angles to each other, feet firmly on the ground. And, to avoid neck strain, your computer screen should be straight ahead, at about eye-level (which may well mean raising its base on a box or stand).
Swivel chairs with castors make it easier to get in and out of a seated position, but these work best on hard, flat floor-surfaces.
Fold it, hide it
For pieces of furniture that are not in constant use – such as chairs and work tables – consider models that can be folded and stacked against a wall, or hidden from sight in a cupboard.
Shelving and storage
Get that clutter out of the way. Filing cabinets, although cumbersome, are the tried-and-tested way of storing large quantities of paperwork in an efficient and accessible manner. Shelving is good for storing all kinds of items to which you require regular access. Always buy rather more shelving than you currently need: the shelves will fill up.
Cupboards are good for hiding away unsightly clobber – box-files, merchandise samples, and so on.
Stationery
There are thousands of different forms of stationery out there – from staples and paperclips to florescent markers and padded envelopes. The best way to create a checklist of your requirements is to get hold of a stationery catalogue, or look at the websites of stationery suppliers. It is often much cheaper to buy stationery in bulk from specialist office suppliers – but you will have to have somewhere to store the large boxes containing 500 envelopes or five reams of copier paper, and so forth.
