So how many of you have ever spent more time opening a toy package than you spent in assembling the toy afterwards? Or you find yourself with the kitchen steak knife in hand, the junk drawer scissors cast aside, as you piece, puncture and wrip at that dreaded plastic clamshell package, long past the point where you care whether you damage the product inside?

That consumer frustration has lead to the introduction of numerous tools for opening packages without the frustration outlined above. There is the As See on TV Pyranna, the One Open-sezz-me Plastic Package Opener that claims it cures “wrap rage” or the abysmally rated Package Shark Pro Opener with Bonus Scissors.

Then there’s the approach taken by Amazon.com: frustration free packaging. Like a good doctor that treats the cause rather than masking the symptoms, Amazon is going to the heart of the problem. As their FAQ says:

We work directly with manufacturers to box products in Frustration-Free Packages right off the assembly lines, which reduces the overall amount of packing materials used.

That means they are also not creating waste by throwing away the original packaging and re-packaging the items. And the scope of their plan is impressive:

This is just the beginning of a multi-year initiative. It will take many years, but our vision is to offer our entire catalog of products in Frustration-Free Packaging.

While I wouldn’t qualify Steelcase and the Steelcase Store as innovative when it comes to our packaging I do hope you’ll find our packaging to be “frustration free. Some strong hands or a basic utility knife will probably do the trick on your next Leap chair purchase. Although I admit that i just might have to add the Zibra-ZPCOPEN-OR to my Christmas wish list.

Anybody that tries to make my life easier deserves a blog post don’t you think? Enter Google’s Sketch-up- app. It is increasingly becoming a tool of choice for architects and designers due to its intuitive features. And, it can be used by people who don’t have a lot of skill in the design area but like to act like he does, like myself. So what is Sketch-up? It is basically a 3-D sketching/modeling/drawing application that lets you design anything from a box to furniture to a house. You can even create your own collections and share them with the world or only with certain people. They offer some great tutorials that are very easy to follow AND intuitive….thank you Google. We even created our own collection in Google’s 3D Warehouse so you can basically dump this right into Sketch-up and play with it.

Well, I was reading in Business Week about $700B bailout (thank you government?) and in between all the doom and gloom was this article about how Sketch-up is helping Design go Green. The article talks about how Sketch-up works with Google Earth and other programs; this can lead to crazy things such as figuring out the optimal spot to put solar panels. That sounds way smarter than guessing.

Oh, the best part about Sketch-up. Its free. Well, the basic version is, but you only drop like $500 for the Pro Version, which allows you to dump you models into Photoshop and other programs.

Dress up a phone book with contact paper to lift your monitor to help fend off back pain.

Yet another DIY tip from our friends at Apartment Therapy. This one has special relevance to us as it directly relates to your comfort at the workplace. How many of you end up with tense shoulders and a cramp in your neck by the end of the day (or if you’re like me, by lunch)?

It goes without saying that reducing your stress levels will help reduce neck and back pain (easier said than done, eh?,), but a great ergonomic office chair will help too (don’t worry, we can help with that). If that still does not work, you must make sure that you are not slouching too much. A chair with a pneumatic height adjustment will help, but it may not do the trick entirely. You must also ensure that your computer monitor is the proper height and is not causing you to slump.

A quick easy fix to raise your computer monitor can be accomplished with a phone book (yep, that’s right…a phone book), craft paper, scissors and tape. That’s it! Check out the article for complete step-by-step instructions, but it’s pretty self explanatory.

I’m going to try it out. I’ll let you know if it helps cut down on the number of neck rolls I do in a day.