Think of all the snacks that make you happy. It could be your favourite type of candy, nuts, or dried fruit. It could also be oatmeal or cereal for those mornings you oversleep and miss breakfast.

All you have to to do is grab a couple of cheap mason jars from Daiso or IKEA and fill them up with nosh. Bonus points if they stack nicely, making your desk look extra organised.

Most people put their stationeries into a mug, a drawer, or a pencil case. Step up your organisation game with compartmentalised or segmented wooden trays for some instant class.

Use one segment for your mug, another for post-its, and another for stationery that you use often, so it doesn’t sit there forever gathering dust.

The setup will look even better if you can get a mug or cup in a natural material like ceramic or metal to complement the wood.

Get these wooden trays for cheap from Daiso, and slather on a coat of varnish if you don’t mind doing a bit of DIY to make it look nicer.

You’d be surprised how much your screensaver can add to the aesthetic of your office space.

Rather than leaving your windows open, use a picture that captivates you or download a screensaver to show a retro flip clock on your screen (as pictured).

We’re aware that mouses these days work just fine on a regular desk. But hey, mouse pads can look really pretty and help unify the colour scheme or theme you have going on.

Contrary to what you may think, dead flowers can bring life to your desk. While you can repurpose old bouquets and put them in vases to make them look good, we suggest you buy dried flowers from florists who intentionally sell them that way.

Dried flower bouquets are usually made with the right flowers that dry well without falling apart. Sometimes they include branches of cotton or sprigs of wheat – stuff that doesn’t look as nice in a fresh bouquet.

Corkboards are not a very new idea when it comes to decorating your desk. But we think what make corkboards stand out are how you use things that inspire you and lift your mood.

Everyone has different sets of colours that appeal to them and put them at ease. Pick out your favourite colour combination and matching photos from this amazing website called Design Seeds and print them out for keeps.

Old brooches or little pins can add a bit of bling, while magazine cutouts of your favourite things can help inspire you. Don’t be afraid to pin up ribbons, stickers, or whatever little trinkets call your name. This is your space.

Buy cheap corkboards from Daiso if you want small ones, and big corkboards from Mustafa or Popular Bookstore.

If corkboards are too common for your taste, pegboards are a creative, carpenter-esque way to organise your stuff. They’re actually meant to hang tools. By putting the pegs in the right places, the board can hold up tools of any shape.

As for the casual user, pegboards can be used to display photos, hang up trinkets like old necklaces, or if you wanna step it up, you can even use a shelf to showcase stuff.

But you’d need to drill holes into a mini shelf so you can insert peg hooks into it before mounting it up.

Grid boards are a lot more versatile and minimalist. Not to mention how easy it is to bring one to work, since it’s so light.

They’re versatile as you can hang additional hooks on them to display bigger and clunkier items like your headphones, scissors or scotch tape. The large spaces in the grid also mean you can hang up air plants (nifty little plants that don’t need soil, just a spray of water once in a while).

The only catch is you’ll probably need to mount the grid up on a wall with hooks, which you may not be able to if you’re in a cubicle with short wall dividers.

If you don’t want to spend so much time doing DIY stuff with grid boards, peg boards, and what not, keep it simple with three things. An old clipboard, pictures, and masking tape.

To make it look more put-together, use neutral colours like beige, white or black, (instead of bright red, navy or pine green).

Try to pick pictures that all match a similar colour scheme; same goes for the knick-knacks you keep in the area. See how this picture primarily sticks to the colours of brown, black and white? If you keep to one colour scheme it immediately makes everything look more refined.

One of the things that you can’t really change is your office chair. You can plump it up with cushions but that isn’t going to hide how it looks.

Get a throw, a big colourful jacket or even a simple rug to put over your chair. An easy go-to is the IKEA sheepskin rug. (If IKEA rugs were good enough for dressing the Game of Thrones cast, they’re good enough for your office chair.)

Okay, we know that your office is probably already well-lit. But a lamp doesn’t necessarily need to be used to brighten the area.

It could be used to add a bit of warm lighting to add a touch of homeliness to your desk (especially if your office is filled with blue-ish fluorescent lights) Or it could be creatively and beautifully shaped, like these ones we found on Houzz.

The trick is to find a lamp that has soft lighting which adds a glow to your area without being too bright so as to make your desk stick out.

Succulents are one of the hardiest desk plants you can keep, other than cacti and air plants, meaning you don’t need to worry about how to get rid of pests, infestations, etc.

They need to be watered once in five days (at most), while some varieties can go a month without any water.

The only thing you don’t want to do is water one too frequently, as that would cause the leaves to swell with water, grow mushy, and drop off (ew). So trust us when we say they’re really low maintenance. Just water when they get a little ‘crispy’ and dry.

Get succulents for cheap from plant nurseries around Singapore, and check out this handy guide from Succulents and Sunshine for care tips.

Text: Sara Mahendran/Herworld Photos: Pinterest