Get A Goddamn Desk Plant

You are a primate, with a natural environment that does not look like drywall. Do you think the animals in the zoo would be happy if they were left in boxes that did not stimulate their natural environments? The point is that our natural environment includes plants, and it is incredibly easy and beneficial to add one to your work environment. If you are going to spend close to eight hours a day in any place, you want that place to be pleasant. Your workplace should make you feel productive and healthy. However, if you still need more convincing, here are three more reasons to make the plant purchase:

1. Fresh oxygen 

From the first time you try swimming until your dying day, we are all very aware of the importance of breathing. It is the most important thing you do in a day because if you stop, you’ll be dead by the end of this article. Although most of us don’t pay much attention to the quality of the air that we breathe. If you are in an office with lots of other people, every one of those people in the office is consuming oxygen and expelling carbon dioxide. There is plenty of oxygen in the room, and the AC is continuously bringing in more, or you’d all have trouble breathing, but wouldn’t it be nice to have an air purifier? 

Your desk plant puts you the closest to the only truly fresh oxygen in the vicinity.

2) Sex appeal

A healthy, green, well-kept plant sends a message to everyone in your office that you have your shit together. You view your desk as an extension of your home, you are a caretaker and can keep a living thing alive with ease. Now I know it is a faux pas to attempt to attract a mate at work nowadays, but regardless of gender, people are attracted to nurturers. 

You better keep that plant healthy though; a dead plant is quite the turn-off.

3. A great place to empty your water bottle 

When selecting a desk plant, I suggest going with the easiest plant possible. My preference is the lucky bamboo. Lucky bamboo is incredibly low maintenance, and you don’t have to worry about overwatering. It can handle as much water as you want to give it. If you are leaving town for winter vacation, fill the pot up all the way, stick near a window, and forget about it. It’ll be fine when you get back.  It has the added benefit of being a great place to empty your water bottle at the end of the day.

I keep a water bottle at my desk because water is healthy, and after the oxygen the plant provides, it is the second most important thing we primates need. However, at the end of the day, I have to empty the bottle, or I will be greeted tomorrow with day-old water, and we can’t have that. So instead of pouring it down the drain, I pour it into my lucky bamboo. 

So get a Goddamn desk plant, if the clean air and the sex appeal doesn’t convince you, I don’t know what will.