Most of my day is spent in front of a computer, hammering out emails and sending responses to customer support questions. Last year, I noticed my hands and wrists getting tired and sore from the work each day, so I invested in a few gel wrist rests — one for my keyboard, and one for my mouse/touchpad.
The wrist rests were comfortable enough, and when paired with a really large keyboard or a really bulky mouse, they are perfect. But these days I tend to use low-profile keyboards, and a magic trackpad, and I found the ergonomics of this combination to be quite poor (see above). The reason for this is, the height of the rests are either equal to or higher than the devices I’m using, which ends up putting my hands at an awkward angle and causing stress on my wrist.
Recently, while putting shelf liner in the drawers of my toolbox (I know — exciting), I had an epiphany.
The shelf liner I was using was made out of pillow-like puffs woven together, and was just a few millimeters thick. I quickly (and crookedly, but just ignore that) cut out two rectangles of the material, and placed them right in front of my keyboard and trackpad.
Holy comfort, Batman! They provide just enough comfort to ease the tension, while still being sturdy enough to lean on when needed, and are the absolute perfect height for my keyboards. I’ve been using them at work for a while now, and they seem to really hold up and do the trick!
So avoid the costly, much-too-thick wrist rests you find online, and pick up a roll of shelf liner from the hardware store. Thank me later!
