Striving For A Minimalist Workspace - Creative Ways of Clearing Wires From Your Desk And Floor

My computer table was getting to be a mess. Wires and cables and cords, oh my!

It was time to tidy up. I think it came out alright.

There's still a good number of wires there, but it looks a lot better than it was. This old dining room table was never meant to hold technology, so it's lacking the usual holes and recesses and secret spaces of a proper computer cabinet. But it's solid and heavy and I just can't justify buying another piece of furniture when I've got this huge surface that would otherwise just be taking up space in our house.

The solution? I was able to cut down on the clutter by mounting things beneath the table.

I mounted my network hub and Raspberry Pi by the rear corner. They're completely out of sight - that's two power cords and four Ethernet cables I don't need to look at. I mounted them right near the rear edge so they're still easy to reach if I need to swap out cables or USB drives. And the awkward legs of this old trestle table actually do a decent job of holding the excess wire off the ground.

Then I got ambitious and realized I could mount my whole power strip under the table as well. That keeps everything off the ground - and leaves my study looking a lot more tidy when you walk in from the hallway.

Mounting this stuff is easy. Lots of electronics have little holes on the bottom to do this. The underside of my Raspberry Pi (with its cheap aftermarket case) looks like this:

All you've got to do is find some screws where the head will fit through the central hole, and then slide to one side or the other, snapping in place. Once you're confident you have the appropriate screws (and you've made sure they're not so long that they'll go straight through the surface you're mounting on) you've just got to mark the place where you want to mount your gadget, and then drill the holes and insert the screws.

Getting them the right distance apart is easy. As in the picture above, take an index card and mark the location of the two holes. Then take the card to your mounting surface and mark that from the edge of your card. (This sounds absurdly simple, but it took fifteen minutes of messing around with a measuring tape before I came up with this solution!) It's easiest to be precise with the screws if you pre-drill, but be sure to use a bit narrower than your screw-threads. And leave the screw heads protruding out of the wood just enough to grab that slot in your gadget. I did this by eyeball and trial and error, tightening them until I was able to slide the gadget on with firm, snug resistance.

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I was also looking around for a hook to hang up my Bluetooth headphones - any way possible to keep as much clutter off the desk. I never found one, but I came across this odd little sculpture:

Oh, man, that looks dusty! Well, that's because it's been sucking air through those fins for over a dozen years. It's the head-sink from an old Pentium 4 tower I only just threw away. But I loved the odd, organic fractal beauty of this part. It makes some pretty neat sounds when you run your fingers around the edge. (Shades of Harry Bertoia's sculptures.) So while I couldn't justify hoarding that old computer any longer, I couldn't bear to part with this component.

Yesterday I realized it would make the perfect place to hang my headphones. They're within easy reach, and close to a power outlet for easy charging, too! I went right ahead and thumb-tacked it to the sheet-rock. (There are advantages to living in a beat up old house.)

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Of course, if I really need to get away from wires and visual clutter, I've still got this desk. Because sometimes it's important to really unplug.

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For some reason I have a real minimalist aesthetic, and it's often in conflict with the amount of old crap I tend to accumulate. (I'm tempted, for example, to get rid of the stereo you see in the first photograph. Those speakers are hideous! But they provide better sound than the Bose systems I've heard, and I got the whole rig for free at the dump.) I can't concentrate if things get too cluttered, so I'm constantly tinkering on projects and then putting things away.

Do you like checking out the spaces where other people work? I do - especially if they're creative people. You can check out the Where I Write Project if you want to check out some fascinating creative spaces.

And I'd love to see yours! Why not share them in the comments or in a post of your own?