Inspire & must haves for your home office. Let’s design an office for comfort & success.

After designing many home offices, including our own, here are our tried & true home office must haves!  

Ergonomic Office Chair 

Let’s start with your back & your body.  You need to purchase an office chair that is comfortable & adjustable. Likely, you will spend more time in this office chair than any other chair in your house.  This isn’t the place to skimp or save money.  You can find high end used office chairs for less than the $200.  Some office chairs we recommend:  Steelcase Leap, Haworth Zody, Allsteel Acuity, Knoll Generation, Allsteel #19, & the Humanscale Freedom.  We always have good ergonomic office chairs in our used office furniture inventory.  

Steelcase Leap Office Chair

Humanscale Freedom Office Chair

Knoll Generation Office Chair 

When it comes to a new ergonomic office chair, we love this office chair as the best office chair for lower back pain.  This chair was designed to keep you in the active sitting position and those lower back muscles engaged.  

Best Office Chair Under 300

For a new office chair, this is our recommendation for the best office chair under 300.  We are not alone in this recommendation. There are over 50 office store owners that recommend this chair to clients.  It has added cushion which is more comfortable on your tushy.  My favorite ergonomic feature of an office chair is the seat pan.  You want a chair that supports you from your lower back to your thigh.  The adjustable seat pan allows you to adjust for your height to cover more of this area.  

Office Organization & Storage

Whether it be bookcase or file cabinets, you want your home office to be organized.  We like a combination for open shelves & closed storage & cool bulletin boards.    The open shelves gives you a chance to showcase meaningful items.  For desk storage, we love mobile pedestals as they store underneath desks & roll out easily.  This is especially helpful if you are the type of home worker that likes to roam to different areas of your house to work.  This mobile file cabinet can join you to whatever room you plant yourself.  

To warm up this file cabinet for home use, we refaced the drawers in wood.  

For an option without a cushion, we have this mobile ped.  It is perfect end table for your coffee while still have your office files near by.  

Office Bulletin Board 

This bulletin board by Umbra is a must have for all offices.  It includes push pins and magnets.  The design is a piece of art without anything on it.  Whatever your design style, it works.  

Natural light is a must! 

Your home office needs a window.  You need vitamin D.  Natural light is FREE & boosts your body’s vitamin D storage. Vitamin D is important for absorbing calcium and promoting bone growth, as well as helping prevent certain types of cancers, heart disease, depression and weight gain.  If your only option is a basement office, make sure when you are taking breaks you are going outside for a walk to get some Vitamin D.  Steve Jobs is famous for taking long walks & walking meetings.  

Go Green in your Office!

Whether it is plant or low maintenance preserved moss, you need an office plant!  We believe in the many Benefits of Plants in the Office.  If you have south or west facing windows, we like our aloe plant.  It is particularly helpful for those office paper cuts!  

Aloe Vera Office Plant

The snake plant is another highly recommended office plant.  It does well in low light & bright light.  Another big benefit to the snake plant is the air purification it provides.  The snake plant is one of top 10 plants for removal of air toxins.  Tip:  Typically, plants with large leaves provide the most efficient removal of toxins.  To learn from Family Tree Nursery with locations in Overland Park, KS, Liberty, MO, Shawnee, KS  via short video snake plant.  

Best Office Plant

Another option is one of our framed preserved moss pieces.  The moss require no additional care and you still receive the benefits of a plant.  The air is cleaned and brings biophilic design into your work space.  

Framed Moss 

If you are looking for a way to display an office plant, we love our wood desktop planter with the recycled plastic self-watering planters.  

Desk Decor Ideas for Work

Big Hairy Goals

We believe in the power of visualization. What big, hairy goals do you have?  Want to sell $2.5 million of product?  Put that goal out there as a constant reminder of that goal.  In the best selling book, Girl Wash Your Face, Rachel Hollis shares a stories of the reminders she has used to achieve her goals.  One of our favorite stories was a high dollar of wine that she kept.  On that bottle, she wrote that it would be opened when she had a book reach the best seller list.  She opened that bottle of wine after Girl Wash Your Face made the New York Times bestseller list.  We love Rachel Hollis quotes for motivational memes at work.  Make sure you home office includes a big, hairy goal you want to achieve.  

Rachel Hollis Quotes

Goal Reached, Then, ______

After you achieve that goal, what will do.  What is your reward?  Have a reward picked out for when you reach that goal.  After you sale $2.5 Million of product, will you go on dream vacation?  Want to hire house help or dreaming of a screen porch?  Whatever reward that will make you send one more e-mail or one more call after a long day, that is the reward to keep top of mind in your home office.  

We created this goal board after being inspired to reach our goals & to Never Break a Promise to Yourself.   We use it for our daily goals.  My first goal was to created some small rewards ideas to keep me motivated while being inexpensive rewards.  

We created a page with our favorite motivational quotes for work success from Oprah, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Rachel Hollis, & Michelle Obama.  

We end with a picture of a desk with a snake plant & the goal board. 

Home Office Must Haves Pin