What to Do With Used Office Furniture: 4 Creative Ideas
May 16th, 2012 | 
Author: Redecorating your office is fun. It allows you to rethink the whole office environment, and as committees go, The Redecorating Committee is much more fun than that sad Party Planning Committee everyone tries to avoid around the holidays. (Sorry, party planners: The virgin egg nog bummed us out.)
The only downside to snazzing up the place is that you have to figure out what to do with your used office furniture. You can’t just put it out on the curb. The trash man won’t take it, and as tired as you might be of looking at furnishings that were the height of fashion in 2001, it’s kind of irritating to see an investment like that sitting out among the garbage bins.
Never fear. There are plenty of creative things to do with your old office furniture that aren’t the equivalent of setting a pile of cash on fire. Here are four of our favorites.
1. Recycle It
You can now officially recycle anything, from plastic bottles to used computers to, yes, your old office furniture. The website Earth911 has a nifty tool that will help you find recycling centers near your office.
2. “Freecycle” or Donate It
Lots of communities have freecycling programs, either official or unofficial, that allow people and organizations to list furniture that’s free to anyone who wants it. Failing that, there’s always Craigslist, the Coke Classic of free furniture sites.
If you want the tax write-off, or just like the idea of giving your furniture to organizations who help people in need, there are lots of nonprofits that will take your furniture and either resell it or redistribute it, including Goodwill and the Salvation Army, as well as locally-focused charities like Housing Works.
3. Reuse It
Before you give away, toss, or donate all of your old furniture, ask yourself if any of it could be used in a slightly different way when combined with your new equipment. The furniture that once adorned the CEO’s office might now be perfect for a lounge area or informal conference room. This is the same theory that operates in many private households, where the living room furniture wends its way from the front room to the den to a college kid’s apartment over the course of a lifetime.
4. Sell It
Redecorating isn’t free, and selling your old office furniture can help defray the cost of buying new. There are lots of options for companies who decide to offload their old equipment in this way, from our old favorite Craigslist to quality used furniture companies like, well, us. (Contact Arnolds for a quote, here. We buy entire office buildings worth, as well as smaller lots.)
The greatest thing about selling your old stock? You get to “recycle” your furniture, and get paid for it.
Images: MakeMyOfficeGreen.com, Goodwill.org, Genscapes.blogspot.com, Cubeking.wordpress.com
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5 Office Furniture Must-Haves
So you’d like to buy some office furniture. Well, OK, maybe you wouldn’t like to buy some. On the big list of things you’d love to spend money on, office furniture is probably somewhere below (far below) a trip to Disneyland and a lifetime supply of chocolate cake.
However, if you’re going to set up an office, or redo the one you have, you’re sort of stuck. The best you can do is to make sure you’ve got all the essentials covered. Plan ahead, and you can save your extra money for the things you’d really like to splurge on.
This is the office furniture you really need.
1. Reception Furniture
The reception area is the first thing your clients and guests see. Make it count by buying a nice-looking reception station. It doesn’t have to be as expensive as it looks, either. Used reception furniture looks as good as new and costs a fraction of the price.
2. Guest Chairs
While we’re on the subject of your guests, give them somewhere to sit, both in your reception area and in the office in general. Comfy, elegant looking guest chairs are a must-have for any office.
3. Desks or Tables
Even if you go for the full open office experience, you’ll need something for your workers to put their computers on. Before making your choice, decide how much storage your employees will need, and whether it makes sense to make their seating areas more or less private. (More privacy is better for businesses that require confidential conversations; less privacy could save money, since you can put more workers at a long table without adding desks.)
4. Ergonomic Chairs
Whether they sit at long tables or private desks, in office cubicles or out in the open, your employees deserve a comfortable place to sit while they’re working. Used ergonomic chairs look just as snazzy as the brand-new, $900 versions you find in office catalogues and protect your workers from repetitive stress injuries just as well.
5. Conference Tables
All the chat software in the world can’t replace a good old-fashioned face-to-face meeting. Get at least one really nice conference table for serious, sit-down meetings. Depending on how open your work environment is, you might also want to consider adding one or two smaller tables in less formal conference rooms, for staff members to use at informal meetings.
Images: iNetGiant.com, Office-bargains.com, InteriorZine.com, Seating-Ergonomics.com, Franz Design Group
5 Styles of Used Office Furniture: Which Is Best for You?
Those old shampoo commercials were right: You never get a second chance to make a first impression. When it comes to your business, that first impression comes from your offices, where decorating choices, color schemes, and yes, even the office furniture itself can give clients and other visitors their very first idea of what your company is all about.
Here are a few of the most popular styles of used office furniture, and what they say about you.
Contemporary
A lot of offices favor contemporary furniture styles, which are clean, unfussy, and minimalist. On the positive side, this style conveys a sense of simplicity and clarity of purpose; on the negative, it can seem slightly cold and remote, so it’s probably not a good choice for businesses that need to make people feel comfortable. (We’re pretty sure Rachael Ray’s offices are not done in a contemporary design, for example.)
Mid-Century Modern
Like “Mad Men”? You’ll love mid-century modern. This period of furniture design had its heyday between the 1930s and 1960s, and focuses on then-new materials like plastics and organic, functional shapes. Much of our modern office furniture evokes the ideals and aesthetic of mid-century modern. (E.g., Herman Miller’s famous desk chairs.)
Traditional
Traditional furniture can actually be one of a number of styles, including Old World and Early American. What they have in common is a lot of ornamentation, luxe finishes, and a general sense of fanciness. This is great furniture choice for businesses that need to convey a sense of solidness and connection to the past, like banks or other financial institutions.
Transitional
Transitional style blends traditional and contemporary for a timeless, sophisticated design. This is a great style for anyone who prefers simplicity and clean lines. Color schemes tend to be neutral, with occasional dark brown balancing out lighter beige, tan, and taupe. Transitional furniture blends straight lines with curves, and is supposed to evoke a blend of masculine and feminine.
Eclectic
Not so much a furniture style as a blend of various aesthetics, the eclectic style is also known is “whatever we had in the storeroom” or “early American Ground Round.” Eclectic can be everything from a mix of retro styles and modern, from folding tables and extension cords. You’ll recognize the latter version of this style from any startup you’ve ever visited. It’s not great for impressing clients, but it does give the impression that you’re working too hard to care about things like matching lamps and carefully-placed orchids.
Image: Homeofficedeskideas.com, Modernnova.com, HGTV, Design-decor-staging.com, Scarlettpoole
5 Cubicle Crimes … Are You Guilty of These?
What is it about the office cubicle?
For some people, it’s a sanctuary, a haven of productivity — or at least a good place to hang up that picture of the beach that motivates you to keep plugging away.
For others, it’s an excuse to behave badly. Maybe it’s because cubicles offer the illusion of privacy, but don’t actually have ceilings, or maybe it’s some sort of cabin fever. But whatever the reason, the cubicle environment can inspire some truly heinous crimes against general rules of office etiquette.
Here are a few of our (least) favorite cubicle crimes you might be committing right now, without even knowing it.
1. Acting Like Your Cubicle Is a Soundproof Zone.
People of the workplace, hear our cry: We can hear you. We really can. Your cell phone is not a magical cell phone that buffers sound. Your cubicle walls are not made of enchanted burlap. Everyone in the office can hear every word of your fight with your mom, and we are definitely judging you over it. The same goes for your music. We are proud of you for your excellent musical taste, but we still don’t want to hear it.
2. Eating a Stinky Lunch; Claiming It Is Not Stinky.
Here is a thing that has actually happened to us before in an office. A neighbor, who spent an hour every day leisurely consuming what had to be an unholy combination of fish paste, hard-boiled eggs, and gently used underpants, started complaining about our coworker’s penchant for split pea soup. Miraculously, we did not respond by throwing her over our desk, “Real Housewives” style. But that would have been an appropriate response.
3. Gossiping.
Gossip is why the gods of the interwebs created instant messenger. I know, you thought it was a productivity tool. It is. Its existence means that you can catch up with your best friend in the next cubicle without yelling your news over our heads, which makes us more productive. Sure, there’s a chance you’re being monitored, but you can fix that by only saying totally delightful things about the boss in between slandering everyone else you know.
4. Using Email Badly.
Listen, we might not always have email to kick around. The least you can do is be nice to it during the last few years of its usefulness. The usual do’s and don’ts apply here: Do ask yourself if this email is really necessary. Do not write in all caps. Do not forward anything, ever, unless it’s work-related. Yes, that baby kitten is very cute. No, your coworkers don’t all have time to watch it fall off a shelf over and over again.
5. Doing Anything Inappropriate at Your Desk.
This includes sleeping, drinking alcohol, looking at verboten websites, and even singing. There are probably loads more than what we’ve listed here, so a good rule of thumb is to ask yourself if the activity is better suited to a room in your home rather than your cubicle, and go from there.
Image: Networlddirectory.com, Pacificprime.com, Cubiclecartoon.com, Bestbytepc.com, Deanlindsay.com
5 Tips for Getting Cheap Office Furniture
Office furniture can be expensive. We live in an era where ordinary desk chairs cost $800, while the price tags for desks and cubicles look like they should be the sticker on a used car. There’s no way around it, though: If you want to keep your company going, you need to give people a place to sit and something to rest their computers on. So what’s a budget-conscious organization to do?
Use of these five tips, and you can get expensive-looking office furniture for way less than sticker price.
1. Wait for Sales.
Most office furniture stores have regular sales, so stalk your local paper or its online equivalent and keep an eye out for the s-word. Just make sure you’re actually getting a deal: some stores have been known to jack up prices to make sales seem like better deals than they actually are. Before you buy, compare prices against competing stores.
2. Buy Online.
Speaking of comparing prices, the internet was made for pitting retailers against each other. Sign up for regular emails from your favorite furniture retailers and you might even get additional coupon codes in your inbox.
3. Read the Business Obituaries.
It sounds morbid, but a great way to get a deal on furniture is to keep track of which companies have gone out of business (or, less depressingly, moved offices) and watch for auctions. Again, your local paper is a great place to find upcoming auctions.
4. Rent Instead of Buying
In the same way that a real estate broker might find it more economical to lease a new car every two years rather than constantly trading in for the latest model, businesses can redecorate by renting office furniture instead of buying it outright.
5. Buy Used Office Furniture
Last, but not least, we’d be fools not to mention that used office furniture costs a fraction of the price of new, and the only one who has to know that it’s used is you. Here at Arnolds Office Furniture, we restore every panel of every cubicle, each drawer pull and seat lever, and every desk, chair, and filing cabinet, so that they’re indistinguishable from a brand-new piece of furniture. The only difference is the price.
Drop us a line and tell us about your office furniture needs.
Image: khamamah03.hostzi.com, Guardian.co.uk, thinkbigkansascity.blogspot.com, office-turn.com, merchantcircle.com
The 5 Most Common Cubicle Conflicts
Ask any office worker about the hardest part of working in an office cubicle and they’ll say, “the people in the other cubes.” Good fences may make good neighbors, but all the walls in the world won’t help if your coworker in the cubicle next door won’t respect the boundaries. (And the lack of ceilings. Seriously, people who work in cubes: We can hear you over there.)
Here are a few of the most common cubicle conflicts, and ways to deal with them effectively, efficiently, and legally. You’ll be back to processing though spreadsheets in no time. Sorry about that.
1. My Cubicle Neighbor Talks All Day
This is one of the most popular complaints about the person in the cube next door. Most folks who work in cubicles complain about a chatty coworker sooner or later. Talkative colleagues come in a few different varieties. Sometimes they talk to themselves, like that person we sat next to years ago who kept a running monologue about her computer’s deficiencies. Sometimes they talk to a friend, seemingly unaware of the fact that their recap of last night’s reality TV marathon is taking place right next to your head. And sometimes, they talk to you. This is the worst scenario of all, for reasons that are probably obvious to everyone.
Solution: Headphones, headphones, headphones. If your neighbor talks to himself, you won’t know about it. If he talks to a friend, you won’t notice it. And if he talks to you, you can gesture at your headphones apologetically, shrug, and get on with your day.
2. My Cubicle Neighbor Eats Gross Food
Nothing on earth smells more disgusting than someone else’s lunch. It doesn’t matter if you love Pad Thai or hard-boiled eggs or split pea soup; as soon as someone else starts eating it when you’re not having the exact same thing for lunch yourself, it becomes the grossest, most malodorous thing in the world.
Solution: This is where you might want to consider breaking your playground pledge and ratting the other person out to a management type — discretely. Rather than name names, you might consider asking the boss to alter or make explicit rules about eating at your desk. You’re doing your neighbor a favor, anyway. How many studies have we read about how bad it is for you to eat at your desk?
3. My Cubicle Neighbor Smells Like a Sephora
Why, oh why, do people feel the need to apply smelly lotions and perfumes while sitting at their desks? It’s bad enough you have to deal with the piles of scented everything folks put on before they came into work. If you have allergies, and statistically, at this point, you probably do, you know how horrible it is to have to put up with this.
Solution: There are many mature ways to handle this. You could go to HR, or your boss, as in the case above. You could ask the person nicely to stop putting on scented cosmetics. Or you could do what a friend of ours did years ago and wait until everyone goes home and throw the lotion away. Just be aware that the last cure requires commitment: our friend who went this route stayed at work an hour later than everyone else for a whole week, just so that she could keep tossing out the offending lotion. After a while, the person with the Bath & Body Works rewards card got the hint.
4. My Cubicle Neighbor Has Terrible Taste in Music
Actually, it doesn’t matter whether their taste in music is bad or good: Sitting next to someone who plays music all day, and refuses to wear headphones, is a nightmare.
Solution: There are a couple ways this could go. You could offer to let your neighbor borrow your headphones. You could use your headphones yourself. Or you could start playing your own music, and see how they like listening to the soundtrack from “Annie” on continuous loop.
5. My Cubicle Neighbor Is Lazy
There’s nothing more frustrating than being on a deadline while someone else is goofing off. In our years of working in offices, we’ve seen: 1) a person who watched Hulu all day long in the upper right-hand corner of their monitor, 2) a coworker who knitted an entire sweater during the last frantic week before a deadline, at her desk, and 3) a colleague who sat by herself and read whole novels … during a corporate seminar.
Solution: Ignore, ignore, ignore. Speaking of knitting, as we were up above, this is a great time to mind your own knitting, or, if you prefer, keep your eyes on your own page. It’s tough to do, but you really have to concentrate on what you’re doing, not what other people are failing to do.
Of course, if you’re waiting for them to come through with part of a project right before the whole thing is due, you might have to resort to passive-aggression. In which case, can we recommend this one place that makes really stinky lunches, or this pungent hand cream?
Images: Corporette.com, Hudsonhouston.com, Fakescience.tumblr.com, Thefifthcolumn.blogspot.com, Guardian.co.uk
The 5 Best – and Least Objectionable — Office Plants
A plant-free office is a sad place, full of bad feng shui and devoid of creative spirit. However, introducing plants into office cubicles isn’t always the easiest solution, either. If you’re lucky enough to avoid spider mites and mold and mildew, you still have to deal with the fact that most plants, like people, thrive better in direct light. The corporate work environment is often heavy on fluorescents and light on windows and air. What’s a plant-loving professional to do?
Take a look at these five plants. One of them is bound to be perfect for your work space.
1. English Ivy
Revel in the rebellious spirit of this invasive species, which thrives wherever it’s planted and will grow right up the side of your cubicle wall, it you let it. There’s something very satisfying about the idea of turning your cube into “The Secret Garden.” Maybe it’ll grow over the doorway and you’ll never have to be bothered with coworker questions ever again.
This plant has zebra-striped leaves and pretty purple flowers. It’s another hardy plant that will grow without much help from you. Also, if you handle the leaves too much, it can irritate the skin, which could potentially help you identify that person who keeps borrowing your Post-It Notes and moving your things without asking.
No relation to the vegetable, this bushy, bright-green plant can grow to be over three feet tall. Put it on top of your filing cabinet and use it as a holiday tree come December.
4. Snake Plant, or “Mother-in-Law’s Tongue”
This hardy plant is pleasing to look at, easy to care for, and can be used in incantations to protect yourself from your enemies. What else could you possibly need in an office plant?
5. Jade Plant
A succulent with small pink or white flowers, the Jade Plant is perfect for people who can never remember to water their plants. It gets bonus points because its rubbery appearance means that if you do manage to kill it, you can easily replace it with a plastic replica and pretend that whole plant murder thing never happened.
The “Cubicle Coma” and Other New Office Slang
Does it ever feel like your office has a language all its own? We’re not just talking about TPS reports and whatever bizarre acronym they’ve come up with for the corporate intranet. (Although if anyone is naming an intranet right now, can we be the first to suggest HAL?) No, we’re looking at other terms that pervade the office cubicle on an unofficial basis: Office slang, if you will. According to the Urban Dictionary, here are a few of the recent additions.
1. Cubicle Coma
According to Urban Dictionary, this is the phenomenon of coming into work feeling totally energized, only to fall into a malaise as soon as you enter your cubicle. To be a true cubicle coma, the depression needs to dissipate as soon as you leave the office.
2. Office Bingo
The next time you’re stuck in a meeting run by someone who speaks entirely in corporate cliches, make the time fly by with Office Bingo. Make a table with five columns and five rows, and fill each box with industry buzzwords. Every time the speaker drops a term, mark off a box. First one to get five in a row wins.
This refers to that traffic jam that happens when everyone in your immediate seating area must head toward the same meeting space at the same time. Tip for workers who find themselves in this situation: Do not moo. Your boss will not find it as hilarious as we do.
4. Workalanche
Hopefully, the digital age will eventually save us from the workalanche, which is what happens when your to-do stack becomes so large that it collapses and falls all over your desk.
Coffee, obviously.
6. Workality
This is defined as a coworker’s personality while they’re at work. It may differ sharply from their personality while they’re at home, as you’ll discover if you spend any time at all talking to their spouse at the Christmas party. (”George is a real stickler for punctuality! He once threw out a batch of batch of breakfast omelets because they didn’t set in five minutes.” This about the coworker who owes you reports from last quarter.)
This disorder causes workers to fall asleep during particularly boring work meetings. It’s highly contagious.
8. Workalurking
Woerkalurkers tend to alternate between actual work and social media. Basically what 95 percent of all office workers are doing on any given work day.
9. Meetingitis
This condition occurs when you have so many meetings, you can’t get your work done.
10. Meeting Affective Disorder
This disorder makes it impossible to concentrate during meetings. Symptoms include hallucinations, sleepiness, and daydreams.
Images: afrozensecond.wordpress.com, melissasavcic.tumblr.com, blogs.voanews.com, adventuresinvoluntarysimplicity.blogspot.com, f150online.com, mycareerbanao.com, blog.lib.umn.edu, buzzom.com, powerpointforpreachers.blogspot.com, ehow.com
Remote Offices: The 5 Best Places to Work Away from Work
The workforce is changing. More people are going freelance than ever before, and even those that stay hitched to the corporate lifestyle are being allowed unprecedented flexibility in terms of hours and work environments. The fact is, we don’t need to be in an office cubicle anymore to get our work done. Mobile technology enables us to work anywhere.
Some places, however, are better ad hoc offices that others. Here are a few of our favorites.
1. Co-Working Space
Need a conference room, but only one day out of the month? Want to be independent, but not totally isolated from humanity? A co-working space might be perfect for you. Many such places have flexible packages for people who only want a few days or hours at a time, and all offer the chance to strike a balance between the office and the coffee shop.
2. Starbucks
And speaking of coffee shops, there’s always Starbucks. Thanks to a fairly recent shift to free Wi-Fi, and their famously ubiquitous locations, Starbucks is the office away from office for many mobile workers. You no longer need to be a customer of a specific mobile provider or pay a fee to use the internet at Starbucks. You might, however, want to pack some earplugs, as noise levels are unpredictable. (Especially when school gets out, or office workers are dropping by for their morning java.)
3. Independent Coffee Shops
Despite Starbucks’ world takeover, most cities and many small towns still have non-chain coffee shops. The upside to these is that they offer a more creative, indie vibe than the big corporate chains. The downside is that their Wi-Fi is often also creative and indie — which is to say, unreliable. This obviously varies from store to store, but it’s always worth asking about before you settle in for a long morning of flickering internet. While you’re at it, make sure to check up on Wi-Fi fees and time limits.
4. The Library
Libraries have entered the age of the Kindle and the iPad, offering free internet and a quiet place to work for everyone from students to business people. The only caveat is that you probably will not be allowed to drink coffee or eat muffins at your “desk.” But on the other hand, you will have a professional shush-er to keep the noise levels down to a minimum.
5. Restaurants and Bars
Many establishments now offer free internet to their customers, and it’s nice to be able to wrap up your work for the day with a beer and some nachos. The potential downsides here have probably already occurred to you: alcohol and/or greasy food is not always such a great combination with either productivity or your laptop. Plus, a lot of places won’t be thrilled if you settle in for three hours during the dinner rush. But for an hour or so, just for a change of scene, your local bar and grill might be just the ticket.
Images: Theofficestylist.com, Triplepundit.com, Guardian.co.uk, Metafilter.com, Ed Yourdon @Flickr
Want a Great Office Design Layout? Look No Further Than Montessori Schools
Office design is an ever-evolving field. In the last 10 years especially, our ideas about what the office is supposed to provide have changed dramatically. It’s possible now to work in a private office, a semi-private cubicle, a totally open office environment, or from home. The question of which model to embrace has a lot to do with the needs of your organization and staff.
Because of this, we can learn a lot from Montessori schools, which thrive on independence and creativity. Here are three of the most valuable lessons Montessori has for the modern office.
1. Be Flexible
Montessori students don’t have assigned work spaces. Instead, they move about the room as needed to work on various projects and lessons. It’s important to think beyond the traditional office mold when making your floor plan. It’s possible that set office cubicles are the best choice for your employees, but there’s no sense wasting real estate if people would be happier and more productive in a more open environment.
2. Rethink Departmental Organization
At Montessori schools, kids are grouped by planes instead of grades. The idea is to create groups that function together on a developmental level, not an arbitrary age separation. So you might have a 12-year-old and a 14-year-old in the same class, and a 3-year-old and a 6-year-old together in another class.
Companies can use this model to help them create work groups that make sense in terms of the projects they’re participating in. If design and marketing work together a lot, put them closer together instead of building walls — real and metaphorical — between people who need to communicate in order to get the job done.
3. Let Workers Work
Montessori organizes time into longer, uninterrupted blocks, instead of creating smaller, more frequently-changing classrooms. In theory, this enables kids to concentrate and learn from their work, instead of being called away to other activities.
This is an even more useful idea for adults, who often seem to need at least 20 minutes to get their head in the game after being interrupted. When planning your office design, create places for workers to go and concentrate fully on the task at hand.
Images: Ciscom.co.uk, Citytowninfo.com, Planetgreen
