There are many reasons why you may consider setting up a home office. Maybe, like me, you want to start up your own company and go into business for yourself. Alternatively, you may be setting up a telecommuting arrangement with your current employer so that you can work part-time from home. Either way, you want to ensure that your home office is adequately equipped and stocked.
Some people are lucky enough to have plenty of space for a home office in their houses, whereas other folks are stuck with a cramped home office. Whether you’ve got a corner in your bedroom or a wing in your mansion, there are certain items that every home office should have.
Starting with Home Office Basics
In the interest of brevity, this guide will focus on items that may not otherwise cross your mind. We all know about the importance of having a comfortable chair and a well-designed desk. We all know that having a supply of USB flash drives can certainly come in handy, as can the right computer mouse or filing cabinet. You may also want to have a few video games set up for your lunch hour. That’s all up to you.
So, what else does every home office need? Let’s have a look, shall we?
Wi-Fi Enabled Multifunction Printer
Even if you’re the only one to ever use your home office, there is still certain appeal to owning a multifunction printer that can be used over your Wi-Fi network at home.
Setting the wireless connection aside for a moment, you should definitely consider acquiring a good multifunction printer. It can be quite cumbersome to deal with several separate devices, particularly when a suitably-designed single item can do all the work. Most multifunction printers can be used as printers, copiers, scanners, and more.
Adding a wireless connection to the mix, this means that anyone with access to the network can send documents to the printer. Even if you work alone, you may have company over from time to time and they may want to print something from their laptops. It also makes it a lot easier to relocate your desk, printer cart, and other furniture.
If you were to opt for something like the Epson WorkForce 600, you get even more than that. It does the multifunction thing with printing and copying, but it’s also got an integrated card reader. You can print photos and documents directly from an SD card or USB device.
Further still, files stored on these memory cards and drives can be shared over the Wi-Fi network as well. This is an inexpensive and convenient way to make use of network-attached storage (NAS) without the potentially messy and expensive configuration of a “real” NAS.
Basking in Full Spectrum Lighting
Here’s something that may totally fly under the radar of your consciousness. While most of us are aware that our home workstations should be adequately illuminated as not to strain our eyes, many of us forget about some of the health concerns that accompany the insane amount of time we spend at our desks.
Your computer monitor may illuminate your face, but this is not the kind of lighting that you need. Seasonal affective disorder (SAD) is a very common condition that afflicts people in the winter and it’s largely because we don’t get the same amount of sunlight during those colder months. This can have a huge impact on your mood and productivity.
One of the most common ways to treat seasonal affective disorder is through the use of full spectrum light boxes. The light therapy is meant to mimic the full spectrum light that you’d get from the sun, providing all sorts of health benefits. A lot of this happens on a subconscious level, but its effectiveness has been demonstrated in several academic journals.
These specially-designed light boxes don’t flicker, so they’re not migraine-inducing like computer monitors either. Unfortunately, they can be quite pricey.
The Necessity of Background Chatter
If you’ve been working from home for any length of time, you’ll quickly notice that the silence can be quite deafening. I don’t know about you, but I don’t like being alone with my maddening thoughts with only the clatter of my computer keyboard entering my ears. It’s good to have a home office slightly separated from the rest of your home, because you should be able to separate work from play, but this isolation can be rough on your psychological health.
When you work in a conventional office, you’ll hear the background noise of your co-workers. They’ll be talking on the phone. You’ll hear the photocopier in the background. You may overhear the meeting going on in the conference room. And you may partake in some water cooler gossip with your colleagues. These simply do not exist in a home office.
While you could certainly use an MP3 player, this can shut out the world. That’s why it’s better to have a stereo, radio, or iPod speaker dock of some kind. If you prefer, you can use the media player on your computer too.
“I was told that I could listen to the radio at a reasonable volume from nine to eleven, I told Bill that if Sandra is going to listen to her headphones while she’s filing then I should be able to listen to the radio while I’m collating so I don’t see why I should have to turn down the radio because I enjoy listening at a reasonable volume from nine to eleven.”
As Milton Waddams clearly illustrates, background music (or radio chatter) won’t necessarily save your sanity. He did burn the place down, after all.
Protecting Your Privacy and Confidentiality
Just as you should be handling confidential documents carefully when you are at the office, you should approach these documents with the same level of care when you are handling them in your home office. No home office is complete without a suitable paper shredder.
Yes, many of us have entered the digital age. It’s the green thing to do to opt for e-billing rather than receiving “dead tree” invoices, but there are still certain documents that will still pass through in paper form. A lot of what you get from the government, for example, will be sent via letter mail. You need to shred some of this stuff in the interest of privacy.
It’s up to you whether you want to pay the premium for higher-end shredders. Some of them can carve through credit cards and all sorts of other stuff. What I do suggest is that you get a cross-cut shredder and not just a strip-cut shredder, as this can add a lot of added security. Better still, get a cross-cut shredder that’s powered by your hamster. It’ll double as his bedding and be a greener alternative!
Uninterrupted Power Supply
When you work from home, you come to rely on certain things. You come to take certain things for granted. You assume that the toilet will always flush. You assume that the fridge will always have a chilled can of Coke. And you assume that you’ll always have both power and access to the Internet.
Unfortunately, real life isn’t quite as reliable as we would all hope. Larger corporations equip their offices with backup generators and you can achieve a similar level of reliability by investing in a suitable Uninterrupted Power Supply (UPS). These can provide you with extra juice when you get hit with an electrical blackout. This is particularly important for desktop computer users, because at least laptop users don’t go dark when the power goes out.
Depending on how things are set up, you can connect your modem, router, and computer to the UPS and then you can continue working right through the blackout. If you don’t choose to invest in an uninterruptible power supply, I highly suggest you at least get a properly surge protecting power bar. You don’t want your computer to fry during a surge.
The Constantly Evolving Home Office
One of the best things about having a home office is that you can upgrade and expand your equipment at any time. When you’re working in a larger office with other employees, the adoption of new technology can take quite a bit of time. When you’re only dealing with a small home office, you can evolve at your own pace and get rid of outdated technology as you see fit. Who needs a fax machine when you have a Wi-Fi multifunction printer?
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