How do you organize your desktop?

[tobecont]

Sorry if it's off the topic. I'm playing with several evaluation kits and devices, including an expensive FPGA board. I have to make room for these boards, a small network switch, a small power supply, a notebook, a computer monitor of course, and sometime a soldering station. I need to manage all kinds of cables: USB, Ethernet, serial, power, ... How do you manage such situations, keep the boards safe from ESD, put things in such a limited space, and keep desktop clean?

 

[schmitt trigger]

No working engineer’s is completely clean if you’re immersed in work.
The best one can do is a state of “entropy management “.

Over 20 years ago, I had the privilege of meeting Bob Pease personally at his office at National Semiconductor, and got to know his world renowned desk.
Bob was arguably one of the better analog engineers ever.

His office was beyond what I can describe with words. Yet, he was a genius.

 

[tobecont]

I am aware of the "Chaos Law", and I also heard that the seniority of an engineer is proportional to the degree of chaos of his/her bench.
But I don't have big bench at home, just a regular sized desk. Hosting all these stuff on it and keeping them safe is a big challenge to me, so I'm trying to find ideas to make it possible, maybe make use of vertical space. At work I have racks on my bench, but at home, for example, do you use stacks, something structured like this one?

 

[ads-ee]

schmitt trigger, was that second picture of Bob sleeping in his office? Or did he blink when you took the picture!

 

[schmitt trigger]

I didn’t take the second picture, that is a Google one.

But when I met him, his desk looked exactly like that.
Something that is not evident in that photo is that the floor was also covered with at least an inch or two of papers and magazines.

Back to THE OP’S question.

Indeed, if your available area is limited, you have to use vertical space. I use shelves in all walls, and boxes and bind stacked together.