Time to Stand Up – My Standing Desk Trial Begins

A standing desk is pretty much what it sounds like – a desk you stand at, as opposed to sitting. More and more, I find myself living a sedentary lifestyle. I sit all day at work. I sit in the 45-min traffic to and from. I sit at my desk at home before and after. Then bed. Some bathroom breaks in the middle, and even some of those involve sitting. I’m actually getting tired of sitting and slouching in front of a computer all day, so I decided to do something about it.

One of my favorite regular sites – LifeHacker – often posts various workspaces, and a lot of them are standing desks. I figured I’d give the concept a try by using whatever I have at my disposal at home. This way, I can test out the concept, and if I find I don’t like it, I’ll just return everything back to normal with no financial loss. I also figured I’d start with my personal work desk in my bedroom because  it will be the easiest one to change without seriously hindering my work style. Besides, with my laptop, I’ve got plenty of places to sit in the apartment.

Here’s my before shot, my regular desk. It’s 29.5 inches tall, supported by a mess of cables below.

I figured I’d put something on top of my desk to elevate the work space.  For my first try, I settled on one of my comic book long boxes on top of my desk, to sit my laptop on. It’s about 11 inches tall and easily fits on my desk, as you can see below.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t very aesthetically pleasing, and that’s even ignoring the mess of cables below. While the notion of having my comics easily accessible is tempting, I found a better plan that allowed me to maintain my basic desk set up. Instead of starting at the top, I needed to approach this from the bottom.

I simply placed my entire desk on top of my trunk. Thankfully, my trunk only contains various books I’m not reading anytime soon. It’s about 13 inches tall, but the way my desk sits on it, the overall structure is 40.5 inches, right about at my elbow height.

The beauty of this is, if I don’t like it, I just remove the trunk and place the desk back as previously established. The trunk also hides my cables, as well as provides additional shelf space.

After using this set up for the evening, including typing this post, I’m alright with this standing desk option. The typing at this level feels fine. My feet feel the pain, but I suspect that will die down with time. I wish my primary monitor were higher at eye level so I wouldn’t tilt my head down as much, but that’s what I get for having a laptop as my primary machine.

This is day one in my standing desk trial, and I believe it’s working so far. Let’s see how long I keep this up.

What does your desk look like?
Have you tried a standing desk before? What did you think?