Working from Home - Eight Gadgets that make Life easier

We all have them. Those purchases that we kinda liked when we made them but that for some reason don’t really get used. I certainly have a few of those dust collectors standing around at home, gadgets that could be really useful but just don’t get used because I’m in the office for 45 hours every week. That being said, a surprising number of these things have been given a new lease of life because of the ongoing pandemic and the resulting long period of working from home. In fact, a few of them have not just been given a new lease of life but have actually turned out to be real life-savers for me. Since we’re likely to remain confined to quarters for quite some time, now is as good a time as any to cover these. Please note that none of this is sponsored since a) I paid for everything with the exception of the second item which was a gift, and b) I simply do not have the range or audience to be of interest to potential sponsors!

Sonos Play:1

While I've since moved it to another place in my home office, the Sonos Play:1 is still an essential part of said office. In fact, it's in use almost daily!

I reviewed this particular speaker back in April 2020, right at the beginning of the Corona Crisis. Since then, it has really become an indispensable part of my home office setup. When you’re working from home, particularly when you’re living alone, having some music around is really essential to not going completely crazy, not that the latter would make much of a difference for me. From music to podcasts to regular meditations, the extra audio quality of the Play:1 really makes a world of difference for me.

Salter Sandwich Grill

Hey, no one said we were only talking about tech gadgets! I got this particular grill as a birthday present back in the days when I was still working for VMware. I didn’t really use it that much until I started working from home back in March. There’s not much to say about its function, it does what it says on the tin. That being said, being able to quickly make yourself a toasted sandwich when your calendar is chock full of Zoom calls even at lunch time is a massive quality of life improvement. Oh, and sorry about the lack of pictures, I presume you all know how a sandwich grill looks.

Twelve South Ghost Stand

You can clearly see the Ghost Stand in the background, holding up my work laptop in this particular picture.

Unfortunately, this stand is no longer available for purchase as it has been discontinued. It is basically a laptop stand made of transparent plastic and used to be on my mom’s desk back in Germany when she was still around, where she used it for her MacBook. I used it at VMware for a while before putting it away as I used another Twelve South stand, the Book Arc, for my own MacBook. Unfortunately, the Book Ark has one major restriction: notebooks only fit when they’re closed, meaning you can only use an external monitor. Therefore, a few months into the lockdown, I decided to replace the Book Arc with the Ghost Stand, as this enables me to have a dual screen setup, which is an absolute life saver when you spend most of your workday juggling large Excel files, CRM tools, and so on. It also means that Windows Hello, TouchID or other biometric login services can still be used, a real timesaver when you’re late in coming back from a break because the coffee machine took too long.

Amazon Echo/Alexa

Alexa and Amazon's Echo Show 5 (shown here) have really come into their own since I started working from home.

Again, I published a review, or in this case a series of reviews, about this particular family of gadgets earlier, back in October 2020. I run a setup comprised of an Echo Show 5 on my desk and an Echo Dot each in my bedroom and in my living room, primarily as control devices for my smart home setup. The Echo Show 5 was a bit of an under-utilised device for a long time until I moved that one to the office, where it is now my primary Echo device, being used for daily briefings, smart home control and most importantly control of music playback on Spotify. You can’t understand how practical digital assistants are until you’ve had your boss call and you can’t find Spotify among all the programs you have open! 

Logitech K780 & M720 Keyboard & Mouse

Switching from my private Mac-based setup to my Windows work laptop was one of the primary reasons to go for the K780 & M720

When the lockdown started, I originally used some of my old keyboards and mice in order to make it easier, not to mention cheaper, for me to even set up my home office setup in the first place. As time went on, this equipment began showing its age, with even the youngest components being five to six years old at the time. You can read the details about the mouse & keyboard in my review that I published a few weeks ago, suffice to say that when you’re doing a job that involves a lot of typing and working with Excel files, having an ergonomic keyboard & mouse is essential, and that’s exactly what the K780 and M720 bring to the table, especially once the multi-device capabilities of these two devices are taken into consideration.

MARKUS Office Chair

This picture, taken at the very start of the pandemic, is one of the few that actually shows my office chair. I guess I just spend too much time sitting there...

Hey, as someone who was raised on IKEA, the Swedish flatpack specialists were bound to show up here at some point! After all, the best desktop setup is useless if you’re stuck on a hard kitchen chair all day. Believe me, I had that setup for five years in my previous apartment. This is actually a piece of kit I got well before the Chinese Communist Party started terrorising medical professionals about COVID-19. It is not only a really comfortable office chair, but it’s also one that doesn’t break the bank. The fabric variant of the chair costs 150€ even with Irelands inflated costs for everything taken into account. Seriously, invest that money, it makes working from home so much more bearable.

SIGFINN Monitor Stand & BERGENES Tablet/Phone holder

BERGENES (Left, holding my iPad) and SIGFINN (Center, with my monitor on top) have been crucial components of my home office setup ever since I actually set it up.

Okay, I’m cheating a bit with this one, but honestly, those two components are a bit too small to warrant a paragraph each. Once again, both of these are from everyone’s favourite Swedish furniture trafficker and have been part of my home office setup since well before the lockdown began. They’re very similar, both made of bamboo and the monitor stand in particular will do wonders to save your back when working from home. What’s more, both items won’t break the bank at 25€ for SIGFINN, the monitor stand, and just 2.50€ for BERGENES, the tablet holder. So just add them to the order the next time you order something from IKEA. Your neck will thank you for it.

And that’s it, eight gadgets that absolutely made my life a whole lot easier ever since I transitioned to working from home. I’ll still go back to the office once it’s safe to do so, but in the meantime, these little helpers make the continued confinement much more bearable. Do you have any devices that never really fit in until the lockdown started? Let me know in the comments below!