Since the flurry of stories about how sitting too long at your job can, basically, kill you, I’ve been trying to figure out what to do about that short of, you know, quitting my sedentary job to become a waitress or something. Articles on the subject sometimes recommended things like walking around while talking on the phone, but this was not useful to me. What with meetings, email, messaging, and talking in person, I clock maybe 5 minutes a week on the phone. Not near enough to reduce my death risk through pacing.

No, I really needed a way to type standing up.

With all these stories you’d think the options for “stand-up” desks would be multiple and easily purchased, but I did not find it to be so. I saw nothing along these lines at local office furniture stores. Web research led me to an American company that had some options, but these were not cheap to start with, and the shipping from there added something like $130 to the price.

I was nevertheless considering it when the site added a link to a Canadian distributor. Prices weren’t any cheaper (but also not much more expensive—not always true in Canada), but the shipping was way less. This was http://www.ergocanada.com.

But trying to figure out what products would work with the desk setup I have was not the easiest thing. It was often not too clear what accessories you needed with what, and what the measurements meant… Even what everything did. Fortunately, they were really responsive to questions by email and phone, even steering me to cheaper options than I had been considering.

In the end, I bought a dual-monitor stand:

And a keyboard tray raiser. Despite all this effort to get the right stuff, though, the monitor stand ended up being too low to use standing up. I would have had to crouch down to work on it, which didn’t seem that healthy. So that meant another call, another order, and another installation of an extender for the monitor arm.

Now, finally, it works. The monitor arms holds both my 19″ monitors at the height of my choosing, moving pretty easily between sitting and standing height. The keyboard also moves up and down quite well. It would be too low for a tall person, I think, but is fine for me. I have an extra-wide tray, so it does get a bit wobbly at the edges in upright position. I’m not finding that much of a problem so far, with a centered keyboard.

It also arrived at a time when I’m having this irritating pain in my ribs on the right side (from coughing? I have no idea) that is very much aggravated by sitting too long. So whether or not I actually live longer because of sitting less, I’m definitely benefiting now.

Too bad it’s all so complicated and expensive, though. Lots of office workers out there, with little choice but to sit 6+ hours a day…

PS And apparently you can about double the number of calories you burn just by standing instead of sitting to work. Huh. I didn’t even know that part…