By Jason Fitzpatrick, Lifehacker – March 28, 2010 at 07:00PM
If you want the health benefits of a standing desk but you have no money in the budget to buy or build one, you’re out of luck. Unless, of course, you use a little ingenuity to repurpose some file cabinets.
Lifehacker reader Josh Nunn kept thinking about getting a standing desk after reading about it on Lifehacker, but alas it wasn’t in his spartan office budget. He writes on his personal blog:
About 6 months ago I read a Lifehacker article that advocated standing at your office desk to stay healthier. I thought it was a neat idea at the time but didn’t try very hard to make it happen. Then Lifehacker again linked to an article in the NY Times about standing at work, and this time I decided to do something about it.
He expands on his reasoning for using file cabinets in his submission to the Lifehacker Workspace Show and Tell Pool:
This is my standing desk. It’s two filing cabinets, edge-on. A two drawer and a three drawer are the perfect height for my hands hovering a little above my keyboard, and my two monitors respectively. I needed a no-cost desk as I work in a school and this is the perfect solution for me.
We applaud Josh’s ingenuity. It’s easy to not get around to trying out something new, especially when you have no money to do so. The staggered file cabinets hack is clever, readily available in most offices, and free save for the labor of dragging things into place. Great work, Josh!
If you have a workspace of your own to show off, throw the pictures on your Flickr account and add it to the Lifehacker Workspace Show and Tell Pool. Include some details about your setup and why it works for you, and you just might see it featured on the front page of Lifehacker.