Creating a home office with Staples CEO

HOPKINTON -- If there's one room in the house that's his, Ron Sargent says it's the home office.

Rightly so, since as the chief executive of the nation's top office-supply chain, Staples Inc., it could be argued that Sargent is the reigning King of the Home Office.

''This room reflects who I am and where I've been," Sargent said. ''Plus, all the art my wife doesn't like ends up in here."

Pointing to a collection of glazed vases, bookends, and statuettes from Rookwood Pottery lining the office's built-in bookcases, Sargent explains that he became fond of the Cincinnati ceramics growing up in nearby Covington, Ky.

The 49-year-old executive inherited the arrowheads, hatchets, and other tools on a lower shelf from his half-Cherokee grandfather. One shelf up to the left, he stashes three pairs of boxing gloves (a pair each for him and his two sons) so the 10- and 12-year-olds don't box each other.

All of which brings us to Sargent's most important piece of advice in designing a home office: ''Make it comfortable."

Nationwide, about 27 million families have home offices, according to Staples' research. Excluding computers, Americans spend an average of nearly $2,000 a year on products to keep those home offices running. Staples, based in Framingham, is a big source of those supplies, posting $13 billion in annual sales.

For a man with virtually unlimited access to high-tech gadgetry and supplies, Sargent's home office is surprisingly homey.

Its bay windows offer an ample view of the neighborhood. Made of a dark, heavy wood, his desk faces out toward the rest of the house to remind him there is life beyond the office. Behind him, an all-in-one fax and copy machine (Sargent admits its a bit outdated), a flat-screen monitor with wireless mouse and keypad, and a 13-inch TV sit on a credenza.

A leather sofa chair tucked into an opposite corner of the office gives Sargent a comfortable spot to sit while working on his laptop and monitoring the score of Red Sox games on TV.

The only phone in the room is an original 1940s black tabletop phone with a rotary dial. But don't think that Sargent is a Luddite. He had Staples installers set up a wireless network in his home so he could easily connect to the Internet regardless of whether he was using his laptop, tablet PC, or home computer.

And there are plenty of office supplies, from Staples, of course. File folders, paper, pens, highlighters, a few bottles of White-Out, and a handful of empty inkjet cartridges.

''I need to stock up on inkjet cartridges," Sargent said upon opening a cabinet in the credenza to find only empty ones. ''You can never have enough inkjet cartridges."

And are those computer games from Staples too?

Well, no. Those belong to his sons. ''Given our business focus," Sargent said, ''the games weren't purchased at Staples."

Naomi Aoki can be reached at naoki@globe.com.