What to buy first for a home office

Decide where it goes before what goes in it

The desk position decides the desk, and in a small room it decides the screen as well. It is worth settling before anything is chosen.

• The space itself: desk width and depth against the wall you have, with room to push a chair back.
• Which way the screen will face relative to the window. A screen with a bright window behind it is unusable at some point every day.
• Socket positions, and how many things are going to need one.
• Whether a door, a radiator or a cupboard limits where the desk can actually sit.
• Whether the room is shared, and what has to be cleared away at the end of the day.
• What the internet is like in that specific room, rather than in the house generally.

A room that fails on the last two is an easy room to quietly stop using, whatever ends up in it.

The two that deserve the attention

• The chair

  The one item worth sitting in before deciding. Try it, find out which adjustments it genuinely has, and check the return window before buying — a chair that does not suit you is worth returning rather than living with.

• The desk

  Depth matters more than width. A shallow desk puts a monitor too close, and rearranging does not create depth that is not there, so measure the depth you need with the screen you actually have.

• The screen

  Worth deciding before the desk is settled, because it changes the depth and the height you need. A laptop raised to eye level needs something to stand on, which is a different line on the list from a monitor.

• The light

  A desk lamp is a small line that affects every hour spent there, and it is easy to leave until last. Decide it with the desk position rather than after it.

What can wait or be borrowed

Already in the house

A keyboard, a mouse, a webcam and a lamp may be somewhere in the house already. A home office is assembled out of a house that is already furnished, so the cupboard comes before the basket.

Ask before buying

If the room is for work, it is worth asking what an employer supplies before buying it yourself. The answer may cover the chair and the screen.

Borrow for a fortnight

A chair from another room will tell you what you need from a proper one. Two weeks of actually using the space tells you something a specification does not.

Genuinely last

Shelving and cable management. Both depend on where everything ended up, and both are easier once the room has settled into its real layout.

Delivery, assembly and return windows

• Assembly is its own appointment

  If a desk or a chair arrives flat-packed, it needs a clear floor and an hour you have to find. That, rather than the delivery slot, is the real date.

• Return windows are worth a deadline

  A chair bought untried has a date by which you have to have decided. Write it down with the order, because it passes quietly.

• Anything that needs a plug

  Count the sockets before the day everything arrives. It is a five-minute check that otherwise becomes an extension lead across a doorway.

• The furniture going out

  A desk going in means something coming out, and removal is a separate arrangement from delivery.

Open it as a plan

Everything above works on paper. If you would rather keep it on your phone — with each line carrying its own price, priority, notes, deadline and a link to the thing you found — the iPhone app ships a Home office template that starts you with a 8-item checklist instead of an empty project.

1. 1Add a project
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   In the app, tap the + control in the centre of the tab bar. Its accessibility label is “Add a project”.

2. 2Start from a template
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   The “New project” sheet opens. Use the “Start from a template” row rather than typing a name into an empty project.

3. 3Pick Home office
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   Choose the “Home office” chip. The sheet says how many starter items it will add and pre-fills the project name, which you can edit here.

4. 4Create project
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   Tap “Create project”. The project opens with its checklist already written, and every line is yours to rename, delete or re-prioritise.

Home office is the chip in the template picker. The project name arrives pre-filled as Home office setup, and that part is yours to change before or after you create the project.

What the Home office template starts you with

Suggestions, and this is the template where the cupboard is worth checking first. The lines it marks Urgent are the ones you sit at; the rest can follow at whatever pace suits.

• DeskUrgent
• ChairUrgent
• Monitor
• Keyboard & mouse
• Desk lamp
• Shelving / storage
• Cable management
• Webcam