Green Works: recycled home office furniture

Green Works is an awardwinning not-for-profit charity which is essentially a secondhand office furniture business to which you can donate or from which you can buy. It was founded by CEO Colin Crooks to divert the vast amount of office furniture heading to landfill and to help third sector organisations buy decent office furniture at fair prices. They also have a policy of employing and training marginalised people and have a network of delivery partners (all charities and social enterprises). To date, they have supplied more than 5,000 organisations with secondhand office furniture in the UK as well as some locations in need around the world. Well worth not only a browse but maybe a purchase too.

How to heat your garden office

Those of you still wondering about the best way of heating your garden office should take a look at Devon-based Multiheat & Energy Systems. Heather Edwards from Multiheat (itself a shedworking operation) told Shedworking: "We supply infrared heating panels for home office, log cabins and conservatories, and our heaters are very smart and stylish. Infrared heats people and objects directly without the need to heat the air itself, so provides a cost effective form of heating." Here's some more detail about the product:

The infrared heating panel from Multiheat is a simple, distinctive rectangle of glass, in either sensory textured or highly polished black or white colour with a small silver coloured frame all at only 3.5cm deep, made to high quality and specifications. All panels are supplied as a simple plug in but can also be wired into a standard electrical circuit and fitted into the ceiling for a sleek contemporary image, sensors and a room thermostat and timer can also be fitted to provide complete heating control.

There's more detail about how it works here.
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Monday's posts are sponsored by garden2office, the Swedish garden office specialists.Click here for more details.

Garden office noticeboards

That fine publication The Independent has a nice piece on the 10 best noticeboards including this rather nice one, Kotona, made from discarded wood materials. It is magnetic and a chalkboard too, with wooden block and pebble magnets available. Available at www.matteriashop.com

Shedworking shredders

Since we live in the age of the paperless office, you probably won't need a shredder... However, if you still have piles of paper clogging up your garden office, then the Scottish Sunday Mail has a nice little roundup of some possibilities including the Acco Rexel-Style Plus pictured. It even shreds credit cards as well as up to seven sheets in one go. And it looks quite cool.

Unheralded heroes for better shedworking

A great little post at Chief Home Officer suggests several items which are undeservedly overlooked in their usefulness in a home office. Two are particularly applicable to shedworkers:

- Wall-hanging files. In fact, anything that hangs on the wall (the phone, the router, the monitor, even small shelves above the desk to clear clutter), to capitalize on vertical space and better organize the office.
- Door hooks. Might sound silly, but the back of a door is a great place to hang stuff. It’s really just another wall.

Well worth a browse

Vector

Feeling successful? Celebrate with this holder thingy called Vector from Art Lebedev. Here's what they say:

"The holder for small items was designed as a business performance curve. The vector of the graph either rises (then it’s green and goes up) or falls (then it’s red and goes down). The office employee turns Vector depending on how much success he or she has been having of late. Vector is an ideal present for a medium level manager and an excellent self-motivation tool."

And here's what it looks like when you want to wallow in bad news.Via Indyblogs: Wild Wild Web

Green desks

There's a very nice roundup of green desks for your garden office at Treehugger by Colin Dunn (above is the rather splendid Knu). As he so rightly says:

"The right desk is an essential part to any green workplace; it has a small footprint, so it doesn't take up too much space; its just the right size to allow you to spread out, without getting cluttered; and it has a place for everything you need, so you can stay organized. And, while the greenest desk is the one you already have, there may come a time where we all need to find a new place to put your laptop or desktop computer."

Design Pod

We've covered a range of capsule homeworking pods on Shedworking from Yamaha's Avitecs MyRoom to Pinel et Pinel's i-Trunk as well as several examples of Andrew Maynard's intriguing architecture whose Design Pod is profiled by Colin Dunn at Treehugger. It's a rather nice all-in-one beast which Colin describes as a "sleek, self-contained office-on-wheels which unfolds to reveal a chair, desk and storage space; when the clock strikes 5, everything goes back and you can use the pod to set your martini on".Here's what Maynard says:

"It is a reality of the changing work/studio environment that we are working in larger, shared, non-hierarchical spaces. For the sake of efficiency many feel the loss of their autonomy, and power over their own actions. By using technology to create a sense of ownership and territory, we can empower the individual, while maintaining a free and fluid work/studio environment. There has become a greater need for an immediate work environment that is increasingly malleable, tactile, personal and real. The Design pod offers the individual the opportunity to control their work environment and further more give them the opportunity to manipulate and move their work station into any environment desired."

flujo - home office specialists

flujo specialise in pretty much every aspect of setting up a home office, whether you're after help with furniture, technology, accessories or other services. According to MD David Bridger:

"Often, when we work from home … there is no ‘expert’ to plan our working space and no consultant to advise on design, effectiveness or technology. The result is that: our working space can become ‘cobbled together’ based on how we feel at the time, piles of paper stack up across the floor, work spills over into our home time, and the ‘home office’ can look like it has been airlifted in from a cheap office and shoved into the smallest, darkest space in the house. A colleague of mine incitefully described the study as the ‘poor relative’ of the house. We spend ages thinking about our kitchen, bathroom and dining room – looks, function, space - but when it comes to the place where we might spend quite a lot of time … design principles often go out of the window. And that’s why we started Flujo."

Well worth a browse, whether you're just about to set up or are already underway.

Martin Holzapfel's bureau

An interesting home office desk and shelf, in MDF, from Martin Holzapfel.
Via Yanko Design

Light-emitting wallpaper

When it comes to accessories, Shedworking has three particular favourites - sheds which rotate, interesting chairs, and wallpaper. Here's some marvellous light-emitting wallpaper by Jonas Samson: turn it on and you don't need any lamps in your garden office (maybe), turn it off and it looks just like normal wallpaper. Smashing.
Via the style files

Beat the cable tangle with LaCie

While garden offices are almost all marvellous, they're not always that capacious. Hooray then for the LaCie Hub. Here's what they say:

"Experience the art of connectivity with this fun, stylish USB & FireWire combination hub for your PC or Mac. Designed exclusively for LaCie by Ora-Ïto, the Hub’s round shape, glossy white polycarbonate finish, and flexible cables give it a distinctive, modern look. Add 4 USB ports and 2 FireWire ports to your computer system and connect up to six devices simultaneously. Bundled with 8 flexible, twistable cables (5 USB 2.0 & 3 FireWire 400), a USB fan, a USB light, a USB extension cable and a FireWire 400 extension cable, it comes fully equipped for easily making all of your connections."

Via Enterprise Nation

Mini Transformer Laptop Workstation

If you don't have much room in your garden office, the Mini Transformer Laptop Workstation from Vienna-basedCreative Industrial Objects could be just the ticket. They describe it as a "multi-functional home office on wheels" which unfolds into a workstation with lots of wooden drawers to provide "mobility and a practical working space for any busy individual".
Via those awfully perceptive folk at Treehugger.

Mikro Cube Work

If you're looking for something new to clutter up your shedworking atmosphere, I'm sure you'll like the Mikro Cube Work by Sam Buxton. Originally created for an exhibition in London's Design Museum, it is one of several by Buxton (you can also get a sitting room, bedroom, bathroom, etc) using flat sheets of stainless steel which you then fold out, Airfix meets origami meets Mecanno. Yours for £25 at npw.co.uk.

Shed hooks

The Lighthouse Shop has these marvellous Shed Hooks at £14.50 each. There's a shelf on the inside while the outside is good for hanging coats. Made from powdered steel. Thanks to Uncle Wilco' Shedblog for this one.

Bibliopouf

This is really one for the Gentleman's Club kind of shedworker. The Bibliopouf - seen here with the bibliochaise featured on the site last year - comes from Nobody&Co.

Shed Shelf

This is the marvellous shed/shelf from Studio Gorm as mentioned on Treehugger and Pan Dan. You can now put your whole life in a shed.

Webble - a must for all shedworkers

It doesn't look like a normal footrest for computer users. And you'd be right. It's a webble. "The webble™ breaks new ground with its ultra smooth gliding motion that gets your legs moving while you work," goes the bumph. "Departing from the static, almost orthopedic aesthetic of so many foot rests, the webble’s iconic shape invites a smile and encourages your feet to go for a ride. No detail left behind, we even added a patent pending spring suspension and self-braking mechanism to keep your office mates from zooming away with your webble™." A footrest with a self-braking mechanism. Now that's luxury. More details here.

The smallest room

San Sharma over at Enterprise Nation asked me earlier this morning about lavatories in sheds. For those of you like San worried about wasting valuable minutes when rushing from shed to house to powder your nose, consider installing a composting toilet in your garden office. We like the Envirolet® Waterless Self-Contained Systems, an all-in-one unit that you can install directly onto the shed floor without needing any external plumbing or even water. Among the many benefits are that they are environmentally friendly (they reduce and recycle waste into compost), feature patented Automatic Six-Way Aeration (no worries about odours) and can be used in winter (no worries about freeze-ups). There’s a video on the site which is bound to convince you. And there’s a heater control switch too.

Radical shedworking chair

Regular readers will know that after a good shed, the one thing we really must have here at The Shed HQ is a comfy chair. The PCE, pictured, claims to be a radical re-design of the personal workspace using a modular and scalable platform based to give a top notch ergonomic working environment. Indeed, they don't even call it a chair, they name it a 'command centre'. Once you've clambered aboard, your whole body is supported, knees and feet too, with shoulders and arms in line with the torso. For more information, indulge yourself here.