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It’s a perennial question: what should you keep in your desk — and what should you bring on your first day to keep in your desk? We haven’t talked about this in a while, so I thought we should discuss reader J’s question:
Can you do a post on essential things to keep in your office/desk? I ask this because I never think of things to bring in until it is too late. Recent example — I’m about to go to a client meeting, and I look down and see my bright pink nail polish half chipped off on every nail. Of course I didn’t have any nail polish remover in my office, so I waste my 10 minutes before the meeting looking around for remover. Other examples include: nail clipper and file, bandaids, Advil.
Some of my favorite posts on the blog are on things to keep in your office — drugstore stuff for your office, tech stuff to buy for your office, food to keep at the office, and the clothes that should live at your office.
We’ve also done a fun post on different uses for office supplies (in a pinch). But we haven’t talked about this in a long while, so let’s discuss. Readers, please list your top ten absolute essentials for your office! What have you been surprised to get a lot of use out of?
{related: how to make your office more comfortable}
For my own $.02, if I had to set up a totally new office, I would bring:
- Tissues.
- Lip gloss.
- Nail file.
- Extra phone charger.
- A shelf-stable snack of some kind (e.g., a bag of raw almonds).
- A cup of my own (or, hey, a water bottle).
- A framed picture of my loved ones.
- Purell.
- A silk cardigan or a wrap.
- This one’s kind of odd, but I think it would truly come before the bottle of Advil, a little salt shaker, or a comfy pair of pants: I’d prepare a link on DropBox or bring a flashdrive with a few things to personalize my computer — family pictures or silly quotes for the slideshow-when-the-computer-is-idle (I actually have a collection of cartoons I’ve scanned in over the years for that purpose, as well as quotes like this one and this one) a picture for the computer desktop, etc.
Readers, what’s on your list? What would you bring to work on your first day at the office to keep in your desk?
Pictured above: Office supplies of blue, originally uploaded to Flickr by Lady-bug.