My PC is quite large and blows a good portion of its air upwards. Consequently, mounting it to the underside of my height-adjustable desk wasn’t an option. But to avoid having dozens of cables running from the PC to the desk, I bundled them together with a spiral cable wrap.

It looks much better, and even though some of the cables are quite taut at maximum height, it works. But there’s one problem. The cable wrap is wound tightly around the cables for over a meter. So tightly that you can’t pull individual cables through anymore. Normally not an issue, until you need a device on your desk to be a bit closer to you.

In my case, it’s the Stream Deck. Under Linux, its usability was unfortunately limited, so I had placed it under my monitor, a good 70 cm from the edge of the desk and thus from me. After my return to Windows, I rediscovered the device’s potential. For example, the music control is interactive. More importantly, there’s a damn good integration with Microsoft Teams for calls and meetings.

The only problem is that now I have to stretch quite a bit to reach the buttons. My desire for order is now coming back to bite me. The cable is actually long enough. But it’s stuck fast in the spiral wrap and won’t budge a millimeter. The result? I have to unwind the spiral wrap, pull the cable, and then wrap everything up again. Fifteen minutes of fun. But since the desk is in the middle of the room, the alternative is just ugly, and there’s no way around it.

At least for the power cords and power strips, I’ve found a simpler solution. Under the desk, there’s a flexible net where the two power strips and a few power adapters hang. Since we didn’t want to drill into the wooden top, we bought some rope and wove a net ourselves. It’s attached to the desk frame. Not perfect, but it gets the job done. I’m actually a messy person, but I also love a clean desk.