Using OneLessDesk

- I'm Jess Stratton, and welcome to this edition of Home Techonomics. Usually I have the product I'm showcasing in front of me, but today, there's nothing here. That's because this week the desk is the product itself. People who come to my home ask me about it, so I thought I'd share it with you this week. It's by a company called Heckler Design, and it's called the OneLess Desk and the OneLess Office. The OneLess Office comes with a desk, printer stand and file, that you see behind me, and the OneLess Desk is just this desk portion.

Here's the problem I needed to solve. As I work at home, I have a work computer and a personal family computer. I like to keep my family computer in a central location, to use as a charging station and just to keep an eye on computer activities, but I need space to move around, and the only other place for a desk is right next to where I have my recording booth, where I record other courses for Lynda.com. So, a large desk, or even a medium size desk, just wouldn't fit. Besides, I don't need a large desk.

I work with a lot of Cloud software, meaning the apps and the data are stored online, so I just don't use a lot of paper anymore. An entrepreneur named Dean Heckler had the same problem, though he was in a tiny apartment, like you'd find in New York City. He couldn't find a desk small enough, so he made one. His design fits two important criteria, form and function. Here's how the OneLess Desk fits the form criteria. First of all, it's made of steel, so it's very heavy and very durable. These pieces don't bend, and they definitely aren't flimsy.

It has a beautiful minimalist design. It's almost like a piece of art, in addition to a piece of furniture. Finally, it's small, really small. It's only 37-1/2 inches long, and it completely pushes into itself, to compact right down to just 12 inches. Here's how the OneLess Desk and Office fits the functional criteria. It's geared towards the paperless lifestyle, but you can certainly work with paper. There's plenty of room on the keyboard mat. There's a compartment in the back of both the desk and the printer stand, to hide all power strips, external hard drives, and routers.

It's also vented in the front for these things. The compartment itself is created with tabs, so that you can wrap all cords and keep them completely hidden from the front view, so it still looks nice and clean and minimalist. The desk itself comes with a long desk pad for your mouse. The keyboard portion slides out easily with nonscuff pads, and in addition to being sized so that they can all tuck right inside each other, the desks are placed at ergonomical height, so the monitor and keyboard are right where your eyes and arms need them to be. It's very comfortable.

Finally, the desks can be moved easily to fit a multitude of configurations. You can choose your colors. Heckler Design usually retires a few colors each year and adds some. You can even order color material samples right from their website. Now, you'll find that you'll be paying more for the OneLess Desk and Office than you would for a traditional wood desk. OneLess Desk is $749, and add a few hundred for OneLess Office. You can also purchase the printer stand and file separately. However, I looked at the decision as importantly as I would treat any other lasting furniture or piece of art, and I treated it like an investment.

These will far outlast any desk I could get at an office superstore. It's made of steel, so it's very heavy and solid, and it comes to your door with free shipping in the U.S., though they will ship overseas for a cost. Also, you can see that I tend to lean towards Apple products for my desk, but, of course, that's not a requirement. These desks are meant for most monitors, and you could absolutely put a large desktop or tower computer right next to it. There are no rules. In fact, the desk is even long enough for a dual monitor setup, as you can see. If you want to see it in more homes, in order to get some inspiration, you can check out the Flickr pool for the OneLess Desk and Office.

In fact, here's my old setup for my silver desk in the living room. You can see how critical a small footprint desk is for that room. It left me plenty of space, it looked classy, and the monitor is at a great height, so it's comfortable. And that's it for this week's edition of Home Techonomics. I'm Jess Stratton. Come back next Friday to see more home technology in action.