How to Build the Ultimate Work-from-Home Setup
Hurting from home? Here’s how to build an ergonomic home office.
We only recommend things we love. If you buy something through our site, we might earn a commission.
How’s the armageddon going for ya? Back never felt better, right? Hip flexors in fine form? Shoulders pulled back and the top of your head pointed proudly toward the sky like a ballerina?
Us neither. Months of work-from-home hell has meant slouched postures to match our national mood, meals eaten over our laptops, and the psychological discordance of spending nearly all our time in the same room, sometimes with kids screaming over Zoom calls.
There’s not much we can do to end the pandemic, beyond our individual responsibility to make safe, smart decisions. But what you can control is your personal environment, your routine, and most importantly when it comes to your home office, the ergonomics of your setup.
We’ve already written about doing an aesthetic upgrade to your WFH environment, which will boost your mood and maybe give you a backdrop for conference calls that helps you stand out. But removing the micro-frictions in your posture, your screen vision, and more can eliminate lingering pain that sometimes grows into all-out bio-mechanical shutdown.
Compassionate employers who recognize that our homes have become offices aren’t just reimbursing for internet speed boosts and the occasional meal—they’re also offering stipends for improving your WFH setup.
What follows is all the gear you’ll need to keep your body in top shape no matter how grueling the workload.
Home-Office All-Stars
PowerDot 2.0 E-Stim Device
Used to be high-end muscle stimulation systems were thousand-dollar toys for physical therapists. Apply the pads, crank up a low voltage of current, and pulses sent through your muscles helped increase blood flow and recovery substantially. Now, you can score a system like this for the cost of a co-pay. It works wonders on sore backs, shoulders, and more.
Wsakoue Resistance Bands
You might already be taking breaks from the computer screen to save your eyes. But what about your upper back? Reaching forward all day can damage the scapular muscles that keep your shoulders pulled back. Try “banded pull-aparts” using bands like these a couple times a day and you’ll keep the balance between the front of your body and the back.
FlexiSpot Standing Desk
It took three months for me to cave into the rabbit hole: Could I find a reasonable standing desk for my now home office? The ones at work were thousands of dollars, and we lost them in a move (long story). But couldn’t there be a cheap and cheerful solution that would beat my cobbling together of random items in a corner? A cursory search proved one thing: I’d been scooped. Until a friend recommended FlexiSpot. This isn’t forever furniture; its provenance is hardly blue-chip. Charles and Ray Eames, this is not. But finding an in-stock, reasonably simple standing desk these days? That’s priceless. Check out the FlexiSpot website for configuration options.
Noho Move Chair
If you’re sold on a seated workstation, consider a chair that doesn’t look like it belongs on the space shuttle. This design-centric solution from the B-Corp Noho company comes with swappable fabric covers and is made from a proprietary construction technology that allows it to bend organically with your body. Bonus: It’s made from recycled fishing nets and end-of-life carpets. As for the coverings, we’re partial to the “sunset” orange color.
Pso-Rite Massage Solution
Hard-to-hit areas like the back and shoulders are no match for this smart solution, which mimics the hand and elbow to allow for deep tissue self massage. Most importantly for seated work, it allows you to reach the psoas muscle, the only one in the body that connects the upper body to the lower body. That crucial junction becomes compressed and tightens with prolonged seated periods.
Dyson CSYS Desk Task Lamp
Screens are bad for the body: Not only can they lead to eyestrain, they also interrupt your body’s natural circadian rhythms. This uber-smart system automatically emulates the properties of natural sunlight and helps keep the visual environment balanced. Not only does it track natural light patterns throughout the day and adjust, it can even be set via app to wake you up softly through a slow crescendo of light.
Logitech Craft Keyboard
You’d think the keys you type on and the mouse you use would be afterthoughts, but repetitive movements like these stack up to the count of tens of thousands per day. That means small problems with how your hands and shoulders are positioned can add up. We love this keyboard not only for the plush feel of the keystroke but because of the assignable dial at the top left, which allows you to assign different functions within your apps. We use it for easily and instantly muting or adjusting volume on Spotify and Zoom.
