Tips for a successful home office

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The home office provides a designated space for organizing bills, documents and even a workspace for a telecommuting parent, home-based business owner, or work at home mom or dad.

In choosing a location for your home office, take into consideration your personal needs and requirements. For example, certain people need peace and quiet and prefer a space away from the kitchen and living rooms, while a work at home parent might need to be able to supervise children while working at his or her desk. Another example might be a garage apartment or out building with a separate entrance that may work best for a business owner who may have business meetings at the home.

Setting up a home office and choosing furniture requires careful consideration. With home offices flourishing around the country, several companies have started manufacturing lightweight, space efficient furniture that is ideal for a home office. As you will be spending a lot of time on the office, you should never compromise on comfort. Time lost in getting substandard equipment repaired or replaced will be effort lost that could have been put into a much more productive activity.

Furnishing your office can be the easiest or hardest part, deciding on what you feel you need in your office. You should have a desk, office chair, shelves and a filing cabinet at the very least. Home office furniture is different from traditional office furniture as it is designed to look softer and more casual, and made to blend in with other home furnishings. Above all, the furniture should suit the tastes of other family members, as it will be a part of your house.

A home office can have a touch of class. It should reflect your style and character and yet serve its functions well. Even with a small budget and a lot of creativity you can set up a home office that looks inviting, is professional, and reduces stress.

Office Desks

When selecting a desk for the home office you must consider the dynamics of your home interiors. Is it contemporary, classic, strong or soft? What kind of overall image does the room portray? Home office desks and other paraphernalia must be chosen such that they blend well with your home décor.

Before you set out to buy a desk, write down the size of the desk you are looking for. Then go online and surf the furniture sites for types as well as designs. Once you have short listed what you like, find out details like price, guarantees, shipping and installation costs, as well as available sizes and colours.

Desirable characteristics of a home office desk are: sufficient storage space, a flat surface to work on, space below for comfortable seating - the legs must fit with space to spare and you must have something to place your feet on; a flexible tray for a computer key board as well as space for the CPU and monitor. If the desk is designed such that you can opt for an extension then the fax machine, telephone, as well as multifunction computer printer can be placed on it.

Aim on a desk that is easy to maintain, is functional and simple in design. This element is important in case in future you find a need to expand and add more desks or office equipment.
If in doubt seek the help of a professional interior designer.

Office Chairs

Perhaps you are building a new home office or you are redoing the one you have. Or, maybe you are looking for an office chair to replace that broken down model sitting in your office.

Regardless, the office chairs of today offer more then just comfort. Choosing an office chair can be as much fun as getting a raise! Well, maybe it’s not that good, but it’s still a great moment!

You’re sitting in your old office chair and it’s uncomfortable. It may be worn and barely movable. Or, it may be too tight fitting. You can find just the office chair you need and want by looking at the office supply stores or department stores in your local city. But, to have the most selection in office chairs, you should consider checking out the internet. With all the options available to you, it can be a breeze choosing the right office chair for you among the websites that offer them. Doing a simple web search can relieve several options as well.

But, wait, what do you want to find in your office chair? They come with more then just comfort. They offer a stylish look that is all their own. They offer back and leg support. You can find office chairs that can provide you with a great back rub while you are working. Office chair can also help to reduce the risk of back injury, wrist injury, and more by providing equipment to keep you safe.

Go for the furniture that enhances your ability to get your work done in an organized, comfortable manner, and also consider not sacrificing beauty in the process. If you find a beautiful home office desk but it won’t provide you a comfortable and functional workspace, don’t go for it. Similarly, if you find the perfect office desk in terms of organization and comfort, but it’s ugly, keep looking! You will find furniture that fulfils both the requirements.

Many customers misjudge the space available at home and they end up buying furniture that is too big to fit in their house. They over-estimate the space available at home for their new home office furniture.


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Car Mini Desk

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This Mini car desk is a very cool desk. Nice and sturdy, eye catching with plenty of space.

Mini office desks are hand-built and tailor made to your own liking. Things which you can change include the top, car colour, tires, rims and also the license plate.

The desk also comes with stereo speakers as well as fully working headlamps, hazard lights and spotlights. The Mini Desk price starts at £2500...but such a cool office desk surely doesn’t come cheap.


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Stokke Graviry Chair

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Further proving you don't have to be in orbit to be weightless, the Gravity Chair from Norwegian baby products maker Stokke can sit upright as an office chair, function as a rocker, and lean way back for that serious contemplation your boss told you to stop doing. See it in its variety of unusual permutations, after the jump.

The chair is available in a variety of fabrics and finishes, but all that versatility in inclination from steep to flat will cost you a steep £1,144, if you're so inclined!
Buy Stokke Chair

Sleep at Your Desk Excuses

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You are caught sleeping at your office desk by your manager...you need to make up an excuse and quick. Here are the top 5 excuses that will get you off the hook!


"They told me at the Blood Bank this might happen."


"This is just a 15 minute power nap they raved about in the time
management course you sent me to."


"Whew! Guess I left the top off the Whiteout. You probably got here just in time."


"Did you ever notice sound coming out of these keyboards when you put your ear down real close?"


And the NUMBER ONE best thing to say if you get caught sleeping at your desk...


Raise your head slowly and say, "...in Jesus' name, Amen."

92MPH World land speed record for Furniture

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Besting his own worlds fastest office record in both comfort and speed, this souped-up sofa from furniture-modder Edd China laid claim to the top spot in the Fastest Furniture category in the Guinness Book of World Records over the weekend, reaching a top speed of 92 miles per hour.



Sofa-driver Marek Turowski (who won his place in the driver's seat in an eBay auction) described the record-setting run as "terrifying," adding that "you feel every bump... worse, you feel like you might take off."

What's more, the sofa is supposedly street-legal, and will apparently soon be motoring around the streets of West London to help attract potential sofa-buyers to Sofa.com (which, sadly, only seems to sell stationary sofas). Of course, no one breaks sofa speed records without taking a camera along, the results of which you can see by hitting up the video below!

Star Wars Desk

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Check out this cool Star Wars Han Solo desk. Tom Spina Designs created this custom Star Wars inspired desk for the studio office of Mark Hall, from the Grammy award-winning group Casting Crowns.


Underneath the 1/2″ thick glass table top, a carved Han Solo emerges from below. The main box for the desk is custom metal, as are the computer cut side boxes which both light up with an orange glow. The carving was done in carbonite. Tom Spina designs has also done some other crazy sculptures and theater props, which are worth a look.

Luxury Office Desks

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How much would you pay for a luxury offfice desk? £500, £1,000, £5,000 or even £10,000. Anything above that would be crazy, right? Wrong! What if I were to tell you that there was a company who makes modern day office tables and sells them for 6 figures. That’s right, 6 figures, for an office table, that’s not even an Edwardian piece, never mind Victorian. But the thing is, the most powerful people in the World sit at these tables.

They are from a designer called Parnian and all their office desks are hand crafted and sell for around the £75,000 to £100,000. Here’s a selection of their contemporary office tables.






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5 Amazing Office Furniture Items

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Office furniture designers are coming up with some crazy designs for office furniture! Here are 5 pieces of office furniture that are beg the question...why!

The 87mph Office Space

Bow down to the World Record holding mobile office, for some reason built by Edd China.

It’s been known to reach 87mph, is street-legal and features a working phone, computer and 3 spare seats to the rear of the desk in case of any emergency meetings whilst on the move. The whole thing was built using a Rover 100 1.4l engine and cost £45'000. And yes, that’s a working water cooler.

The B-747 Cowling Reception Desk
It’s astounding that someone would ever even consider creating a reception desk by using a highly polished Jumbo Jet cowling but thankfully it’s been successfully done by the geniuses at Motoart.

According to the designers, only 2 or 3 of these Jumbo Jets become available each year so the fact that they even get their hands on any of these 100″ diameter engine coverings is impressive. Each reception desk comes with a wooden shelving system and glass work surface.

The Treadmill Workstation
Dr James Levine (seen elegantly demonstrating the workstation on the right) recently unveiled, in partnership with Steelcase, the Walkstation.

The intention is to encourage mild exercise during the working day by way of non-travelling at the suggested walking speed of 1 mile per hour. Just make sure your boss supplies the waterproof keyboard for when the coffee comes round.

The B-52 Ejector Seat Office Chair
This amazing office chair, available from Motoart, consists of a reconditioned and adapted ejector seat taken from a decommissioned B-52 Bomber.

Sadly the mechanism required to vertically propel your boss from the seat has been sensibly removed but this still must rank as one of the coolest office chairs on earth. Prices are only available on request.

The MiniDesk
The world’s most charming office desk is easily the MiniDesk, designed by Glynn Jenkins.

Prices start at £3'500 but from where we’re sitting it looks to be worth every penny. If you could somehow persuade your boss to fill the office with these custom built desks, just make sure all doorframes leading to the office are 30″ wide.


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Office Furniture for Giants

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Why is it that human beings are intent on building things on such a large scale?With that in mind, we decided to work out whether a giant would be able to furnish an extremely large office with bafflingly large equipment that has already been made. Just the basics. We didn’t expect to get very far but were pleasantly surprised with the results. The world of enormous office furniture…

Table and Chair
Without a place to sit, the office wouldn’t be very practical or comfortable, so that’s how the search started.
Within minutes we found the enormous table and chair you see above, created by Giancarlo Neri, an Italian sculptor. It stood on Hampstead Heath in 2005 and measures 30ft in height - ample for the average giant.

Laptop
So, the giant is seated. Next up is a computer. Unfortunately we couldn’t find a desktop PC large enough for a giant, but don’t worry, we found a gigantic, fully-functioning laptop instead.

It was exhibited at the CeBIT trade fair in Hanover, 2008 and looks as if it would fit perfectly on the table. Wow.

Printer
We have it on good authority that giants just love printing. But surely there isn’t a printer large enough to compliment the laptop above?
Of course there is. It’s called the HP Scitex TJ8300, has a width of 13ft and can be found on HP’s website here. For a sense of scale, have a look at the PC to the right of the printer.

Telephone
We’re possibly running out of space on our table but we cannnot let a giant work without a huge telephone.
This one was shown (apparently fully-functioning) at last year’s VoiceCon in Orlando. We also found this one but decided it wasn’t modern enough to share table space with the high-end technology we’ve already found.

Filing Cabinet
When the thought of an enormous filing cabinet surfaced, little did we know that we’d find one that was actually too big for our giant’s office.
It reaches 65ft into the air, just over double the height of the table, and stands permanently as an exhibit in Napa, California.

Cup Of Coffee
It’s all very well having the correct furniture and technology but we’re forgetting vital refreshments.
This is officially the world’s largest cup of coffee and looks pretty much perfect for our office. The cup has a diameter of 7.6ft and to fill it just once requires 801 kilos of instant coffee and 4′000l of water.

So there you have it, we found enough enormous office furniture and equipment to get a giant through a day. Considering giants don’t even exist that’s pretty impressive.


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Cool Office Desks

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Looking for cool computer desks for your home office then check these desks out!

Vision One Computer Station
One of the most remarkable workstations I’ve ever seen, this Corvette Red ergonomically correct workstation has unlimited style and comfort.

You can upgrade your package to include the 12-way-powered Porsche leather bucket seat, which is shown in the picture to the left. The Flagship model shown starts at $2600 and includes support for three flat-screen displays, provides superb elbow support, an adjustable foot rest, surround sound speaker brackets, and not to mention a bad-ass look!

The Trey Chair
When you first check out the trey chair, nothing really strikes you as out of the ordinary. Looks like a comfortable, ergonomic design right? Wrong!

The trey chair is actually a marvel of modern design that breaks into two “low rider” pieces that can be used as a normal desk chair, a lounge chair with a footrest, or a simple chair with desk like features. Click on the thumbnail to the left for a better look at the trey chair.

Wing Desk
Do you work in the aviation industry? Know someone who is nuts about planes…we mean really nuts?
Then may we suggest this Wing Desk, made out of (you guessed it) the actual wing of a plane. This unique wing desk was made by Dutch designer Dolph Bode from part of a 1944 DC-3 airplane wing. (Note: Don’t forget to perform a full flight check every morning before work.)


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