Since the start of our company, we’ve successfully maintained a home office for the last 11 years. What’s the secret to our success? It’s simple: we got the right home office essentials as soon as we could.

With more people than ever working from home since the pandemic, we thought it was important to share our experience with setting up a home office.

Now, whether you already have a home office or you’re thinking about setting one up, we highly recommend the products below to make your home office more comfortable.

We do want to disclose that whilst this article does contain affiliate links, all of the products we linked to are ones we purchased ourselves after doing our own research. We still use all of these products in our home office months and even years later.

1. An Air Purifier

If you have a home office, you should know how important it is to keep the air clear, especially if you spend hours each day in the same room.

With that in mind, our first recommendation for a home office essential is simply an air purifier. But not just an old air purifier will do, because if you’re serious about improving the air quality in your home office, then what you really want is an air purifier that uses a HEPA filter. These filters are great because it filters out those really particles that can irritate your airways, so if you suffer from asthma or allergies, then this is a must.

We personally use a GermGuardian Air Purifier in our own office home.

2. A UPS System

No, not the United Parcel System… system! We mean an uninterruptible power supply. If you’re not familiar with these systems, you connect your computer, monitor, and other essential devices to them. From that point on, if the power for the room cuts out for any reason, your devices will remain powered on for several more minutes, giving you enough time to save any unfinished work.

Another big benefit to these is that they also function as a surge protector. In other words, you don’t have to worry about any of your expensive electrical devices getting friend due to a blackout. We live in an area that experiences blackouts occasionally, so after researching different UPS systems, we went with the CyberPower CP850PFCLCD PFC Sinewave UPS System.

3. A Bluetooth Adapter

Not every computer comes with a bluetooth adapter, especially if you use a tower computer. If your computer is one of these, then you’ll be pleased to know that you can just buy a USB Bluetooth Adapter for your PC. We find this is especially useful if you plan on connecting a bluetooth earbuds to your computer, as bluetooth earbuds don’t typically come with their own adapters.

A funny story about this is that we once purchased a couple of “USB bluetooth adapters” back in 2018 on eBay. When we got them in the mail, we plugged them into our computers. The little LED lit up, but they didn’t work; the computer didn’t even seem to be registering them as having been plugged in. Months after we replaced them, we opened them up to find out that they were literally just LEDs. Can you believe that?

4. A Portable Neck Fan

Think this one isn’t an essential? Think again!

You wouldn’t believe how much of a difference one of these makes. We’ve mentioned in our other articles that our home office is located out here in the desert of Southern California, so it’s nice being able to just press a button to turn on a neck fan and cool down just a little bit. It means you don’t have to adjust yourself and face a stationary desk fan, too.

We’ve purchased a few different neck fan models, from a very cheap model to a very, very expensive model that uses peltier plates. Our verdict is that if you want something simple, the JISULIFE Portable Neck Fan turned out to be the best fit for our needs.

5. A Trash Can

That’s right, just a trash can.

We have a couple of iDesign Spa Rectangular Trash Cans in our home office, but we only use these as they fit the aesthetic we’re going for and they’re small enough to fit under our desks. Keep in mind that they’re not covered, but we haven’t had an issue with any smell from them.

6. A Handheld Vacuum

Handheld vacuums, more specifically the battery-operated ones, are useful because you can just set them up in the room, keep them charged, and use them whenever you need to clean something up real quick.

We’ve purchased a few different models of handheld vacuum over the years, including one model that advertised itself as a “wet/dry vac” that would suddenly becomes possessed in the middle of the night after we vacuumed up a bit of water. We hate that “wet/dry” vacuum to this day, but the one we love is the BLACK+DECKER 20V Max Handheld Vacuum. It’s not a wet/dry vacuum, but we’ve found that it has no problems with small spills, even if it’s not advertised for that.

7. An Electric Air Duster

Regardless of whether or not your office has a computer, an electric air duster is a great home office essential to have around, and we’re going to tell you why!

Because when you’re feeling too lazy to clean up any dust or dirt on the floor, it can be a ton of fun to just turn the air duster on and blow everything into a corner! Hey, why not use that handheld vacuum we previously suggested to clean that corner up?

We originally found out about this one from Reddit, but the XPOWER A-3B Cyber Duster was the one we ended up purchasing.

8. A Screen Door

We don’t mean just any screen door, but rather an easy-to-install mesh “door” that just attaches to the outside of your doorway. Some of them have sticky tape, and others require you to the nail them to the frame. Whichever one you choose, we went with the SHRRL Reinforced Cat Screen Door because it usually keeps our 20 pounds Bengal cat out of the home office. Usually.

9. A Tower Fan

Believe it or not, we use these in our own home office not to cool ourselves down, but to direct heat away from our computer towers and out the door of our home office. If you live in a hot climate, don’t have access to central air conditioning, or you just want to cool the room of your home office down; they when highly recommend getting one of these.

The one we use in our own home office is the Honeywell QuietSet Whole Room Tower Fan-Black.

What Should You Choose For Your Home Office?

If you haven’t figured out which of these items is really an essential for your home office, ask yourself what makes you uncomfortable with your current setup? Make a list from that and determine which of those is the most disruptive to your work. In our case, we found the heat from our computers to be sickening, the dust to be distracting, and the cat to be annoying when she comes in and out of the office to scratch up our chairs (sorry cat, but you’re not welcome back in here after that).