The 17 Best WFH Gifts
A compilation of the 17 best WFH gifts should resonate with all of us. Whether you're doing the WFH thing yourself, or just know someone - or 30 someones - helping to take the world's work from home population to record-setting levels, I project WFH gifts are going to be piled high under the tree this year.
Actually, WFH gifts may even replace the tree itself, given how many people have had to convert its special nook in the living room into their makeshift home office or home schooling center. Charlie Brown Christmas Tree for the desktop in 2020, maybe?
From standing desks to swivel chairs, to converting beds and couches into workstations, to tools for achieving a work-life balance when the head-on collision of the two has left them both decidedly unbalanced, here are the 17 best WFH gifts.
Note: WFH gifts are priced as they were at printing. Pricing, and availability, are subject to change.
Welaxy Drawer Organizer Trays
Desk a cluttered mess? Dining room table you're using as a desk look like a tsunami victim? The guest bed you occasionally use as your WFH depot - oh Baby Jesus, the guest bed.... Just take a deep breath, and Welaxy.
Welaxy Drawer Organizer Trays are 8-piece sets of recycled PET felt bins that look as pleasing to the eye empty as they will be filled neat and orderly with your chaos of office supplies, random housewares, and hobby bits. The trays have a modern design and come in a handful of color combinations. Each set includes multiple round and rectangular shapes, all with an inviting fuzzy texture. Arrange them on your desktop in patterns pleasing to you, or Tetris the organizer trays into a drawer for tidy storage that remains out of sight.
Fellowes Elea Suspended Desk Chair
Fellowes' new Elea suspended desk chair aims to get your workday in full swing - natural, supported, ergonomic swing - whether you're at the office or scooted up to the dining table in your makeshift WFH setup.
Like the STOIC Active Standing Mat, the Elea Chair goes for the design hat trick of physiological benefit, aesthetic interest, and fun & funky to use. The Elea uses Fellowes' patent-pending Omni-Kinetic Suspension Technology in a free-rocking seat that adapts to and follows along with your body's natural movements. This, according to Fellowes, both makes the chair more comfortable to sit in, and allows you to have a more active workday, even while in the butt-to-seat position.
Cubii JR Seated Under Desk Elliptical Machine
The Cubii JR, an under-desk elliptical machine you can use while seated, merges work from home with workout from home...for better or worse work.
Like stand-up ellipticals, and the glorious ElliptiGO, Cubii has an ergonomic design that imparts no joint impact during use. Tucked under your desk where you can't see it, and driven by natural, fluid pedal strokes, the Cubii JR endeavors to melt into your body function background, becoming a near unconscious activity that keeps your legs moving, blood flowing, and heart working just a little harder while you're seated and working. Or watching TV. Or assembling one of the 14 best DIY build kits.
Livit Backyard Studypod
The Livit Studypod, a prefab office for your backyard, is one solution emerging from the explosion in popularity (and, yeah, necessity) of working from home, plus the all-new phenomenon of going to school from home. Studypods don't come cheap, but they're a lot less expensive than some of their peers, such as the Pod Space prefab office cabins, and depending on how long the WFH and study-from-home trends continue, they could end up paying from themselves over time.
AboveTEK Portable & Retractable Laptop Lap Desk
The AboveTEK Laptop Desk has your awkward WFH situation, your right- and left-handedness, and your laptop churning at 120 degrees covered. In other words, the AboveTEK Laptop Desk has got your back lap.
The portable work surface features a retractable mouse pad that extends either to the right or left side, or stays parked in the middle, to accommodate righties, lefties, and people like me who use their laptop's trackpad for everything. The mouse pad adds another 7.375" x 6.125" of space to the lap desk's 14.125" x 9.875" center panel.
Gaiam Balance Disc - Wobble Cushion for Your Desk Chair
The Gaiam Balance Disc is mostly a wobble cushion for your desk chair, but also partly an accessory for core strength and balance exercises out of your chair. It's a great mate for anyone with visions of improving their posture, plus eases those with more lofty fitness goals into the process more gently than a Peloton bike.
Levit8 Flat-Folding Portable Standing Desk
The Levit8 is a portable standing desk that carries flat like folder, and then goes all geometric screensaver dance to twist out into an elevated work surface when you want to stand on two feet rather than sit on 2 cheeks to get shit done.
Levit8 flat-folding standing desks are available in 4 different heights, all with 9" x 9" square top surfaces. The small is 9" tall, medium 11.9", larger 14", and X-large 16.2". The origami desks are made of 100% waterproof nylon, and are strong enough to support items up to 20 times their own 2-ish-pound weight.
Soul Seat Cross-Legged Chairs
The Soul Seat is for those of you who long to sit cross-legged at your desk. Or in a half-kneeling position. Or with one leg tucked underneath you. Or like you're using a Squatty Potty at your desk. In other words, the Soul Seat is for all 11 of you out there.
Joking aside, Soul Seat creator Pack Matthews developed the chair as an alternative for people who want to stay active and shift between different sitting positions while they work. The Soul Seat platform and perch combo facilitates this without sacrificing body alignment and ergonomics. Crafted with input from a physical therapist, yoga instructors, fine woodworkers, and industrial engineers, the Soul Seat looks a little like an Alexia Meditation Seat, with more options for adjustment. Both the platform and perch raise and lower independently.
Overbed Work Desk & Table
Whether you're nursing an injury, a hangover, or just a whole bunch of lazy bones, an overbed computing cart will help you complete your professional duties reclined comfortably on your mattress just as you would stuffed into your el cheapo IKEA chair.
STOIC Active Standing Mat
Are you STOIC enough to work standing on a plank of nails? Cook as your feet and ankles stay active atop a Redwoods forest bed? Home school while balancing on and fidgeting through Flathead River rocks? monkii's STOIC Active Standing Mat challenges you to get stronger, healthier, more engaged through all of the above with the company's intriguing new take on incorporating movement into your day.
Gingko Octagon One LED Desk Lamp
Get into the Octagon without getting bludgeoned and bruised up, or being stuck for the rest of your life with UFC ears. The Gingko Octagon One is a modern LED desk lamp whose swanky geometric shape is further enhanced by its versatility in positioning.
Octogon One's 8 flat sides allow for desk placement at a 45-degree angle, parallel to your tabletop surface, or straight up and down. The lamp is also wireless, powered by a rechargeable battery in the base, and controlled with a touch button. Under its light-diffusing cover lie 36 mLED lights.
Conquer Adjustable Height Cycling Trainer Desk
Adjustable height cycling trainer desk? Looks more like an adjustable height cycling trainer airplane tray table. But for the cyclists I know who are serious about turning their road bikes into stationary bikes so they can spandex-up, crouch down, and pedal that shit inside, it won't matter. Just having this multi-tasking option, the possibility of spending time on that glorious enema bulb of a saddle come rain, snow, quarantine, quarterly report presentation, or Teams meeting, is enough to overlook the chintzy look of Conquer's trainer desk setup.
Couchmaster CYBOT Ergonomic Lap Desk
Open your laptops and open your laps to the Couchmaster CYBOT, an ergonomic lap desk for gamers, work-from-homers, social media socialites, online shoppers, and internet trolls alike. Designed specifically for high-output notebooks, the Couchmaster CYBOT doesn't just provide an anatomically-friendly design for use on a couch or in a chair, but it also brings a special ventilation grille to the table - literally. The top surface of the lap desk has a large circular grill cut out to encourage optimal cooling of gaming notebooks measuring up to 17".
Mobile Laptop Desk with Adjustable Tabletop & Footrest
Uh, is it just me or did whoever did the photoshoot for this mobile laptop desk with adjustable tabletop and footrest nail it? From conception to execution, from stilettos up to hair down, I don't even really need a mobile laptop desk with adjustable tabletop and footrest, but if reclining in it is going to make me look as comparably relaxed and ballin' and smokin' hot as that lady, I really, really want one.
The portable, low-profile, and relatively cheap butt and foot seat on wheels has both a fully adjustable padded footrest and laptop desk. For your lower half, rotate the rest 360 degrees, and move it up and down to find your perfect setting. Then add a chair to start chillin' like a CEO, even if you're on a teacher's salary.
Bomber Jacket Leather Swivel Cocoon Chair
The Bomber Jacket Leather Swivel Cocoon Chair is like the Evil Villain Chair with a different name. And you know what Shakespeare says about that: "An Evil Villain Chair by any other name would help you devise a plot to take over the world just as sweet."
And even if you're not into nefarious pursuits, the Bomber Jacket Cocoon was made for relaxation, so you'll at least be chillin' like a villain every time you sit down.
Feng Shui Desktop Gong
Ring the Feng Shui Desktop Gong to ground and center yourself. To calm yourself down after a particularly contentious Zoom meeting. To celebrate making it through another WFH day without killing the family who's making you dream of your old hourlong commute to the office for the first time in your life.
The Emperor Workstation
The pinnacle of functionality and comfort and it looks like a scorpion? Starting at nearly $6,000, MWE Labs' Emperor line of workstations may require a CEO-sized wallet for purchase, but given that owning one may actually make me want to work 120-hour weeks from home...or at least 20-hour weeks...which would still be 4 times more than the 5-hour weeks I currently log...I'd probably recoup my costs within...I don't know, someone who's good at math story problems figure out the specifics. It probably wouldn't be very long and the initial investment would be well worth it is my point.
Because once I had the hybrid chair paid for, I would obviously redirect my efforts to contribute to the rat race to more important endeavors, such as using the Emperor as an aid and prop in becoming the next WFH Dr. Claw.