A study last year found that 77-percent of men now have access to some sort of flex time with their employers. That’s great, because it means more face time with your kids in the home office and less FaceTime with your kids. But to take advantage of the company policy that lets you get home for dinner so long as you still get those TPS reports in by morning, you need space to work — ideally space that you’re not sharing with the cast of Frozen and the collected works of Dr. Seuss. This guide to the best home office furniture and supplies will help mitigate all the space your kids take up by maximizing whatever is left.
One Less Office Suite
If you can only buy one piece of furniture for a home office, the OneLess suite gets you a desk, printer stand, and file organizer, all of which nest 15 inches from the wall when not in use. If a grand is too rich for your blood, or you just think printing is so 2012, the pieces are all available for purchase individually as well.
Orange22 Labs Float Wall Desk
If you’ve already said goodbye to your desktop computer, maybe it’s time to say goodbye to another vestige of the computing age: desk legs. This desk comes in two lengths — 36 or 50 inches — but both protrude only 15-inches from the wall. And since they mount directly to the wall, you can make as many “stud finding” jokes as you want during installation.
Universal Expert Textile Office Collection
Home office wall art is like Kim Kardashian — it draws your attention without providing any real purpose. This hanging canvas organizer from designer Sebastian Conran is so slick, it almost resembles art, but is actually useful because it holds all the stuff that won’t fit on your 15-inch-deep desk.
Phiaton Chord MS 530 Noise-Cancelling Headphone
It’s OK to admit that you sometimes appreciate the relative peace and quiet of your office, and the Chord MS 530 can recreate some of that by actively canceling out any noise created along the frequency of kid. In addition to winning awards for their tech and their design, these cans are also wireless, so you won’t accidentally take your computer with you when you head to bed.
Zolt Universal Power Adapter
If space is at a premium, then presumably electricity is, too. Zolt lets you plug a laptop plus 2 mobile devices into a single outlet, in a form factor small enough to fit in your pocket. It gets bonus points for making you the most popular guy at airport gates, too.
Blue Lounge Soba
A crow’s nest of cables seriously increases the chance of all your home office gear following your kids into the kitchen for dinner, but these ingenious little jackets bundle everything in a way that makes it easy to keep them out of limbs’ reach. Think of them as jock straps for your loose cords.
DrawAttention Whiteboard Board Sticker For Your Laptop
This space-saving brainstorm tool turns the lid of your laptop into a whiteboard, which has applications why beyond your tiny home office — for example, now you can communicate your order to a coffee shop barista without even getting up from your computer.
Aerelight OLED Desk Lamp
If you’ve even heard of organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs), then you’re probably a bit of a TV geek, since that’s the only place the technology is used — or, was the only place until Aerelight made a desk lamp with the stuff. Beyond being a power-sipping lamp with much richer light than normal LEDs, this high-tech lamp for your home office also features a wireless charging pad for Qi-compatible devices and phone cases.
