Five years ago this month, I finally started working from home on account of the pandemic. This was a major change after 14 years being in an office, although the transition was delayed from March because my employer at the time had only had desktop PCs and needed to buy us laptops.
Before this, I’d already been interested in a standing desk. Regular use can help improve your overall health. To this end, I’d experimented with differnt layouts for my own computer, settling on a tabletop stand that could hold a laptop and nothing more.
With the prospect of working from home, however, it was necessary to find room for an external monitor because we used several software applications and it was easier to keep them all on screen at the same time. I quickly found a gas-lift standing desk adaptor and the employer made a contribution towards buying it.
In this time, I’ve changed jobs twice and moved house once, and I still work from home for the majority of the time. I realised recently that while the setup worked perfectly well, the equipment took up more than twice the space of what I actually required, so it was time to scale down.
My new desk is just 600mm square, split horizontally, as seen below.
The far half of the tabletop can hold the monitor arm and laptop, while the keyboard can be at a different height and/or angle on the near half. It even has a built-in extension cable and LED lights, eliminating the need to use my own cable.
I’ve had to compromise slightly, with the wooden shelves providing a handy place for a few of the electrical adaptors. However, all the essential parts are present and the new setup fits much more snugly into the room.
Here’s to this lasting at least the next five years, if not much longer.
Gavin Cameron 