Home office decluttering. And Malc's Law of the Level Surface.
, by Sarah Frame, 1 min reading time
Malc, from Cambridge, was a good friend of Elderflower Lane. He was a craftsman. A fixer. Good with wood. In fact, good at anything that required good, old fashioned, hands-on skills.
He also invented a law. Or rather, we turned one of his observations into one. And this law applies to decluttering, especially in the context of a home office.
We call it Malc’s Law of the Level Surface.
In his daily working life, Malc noticed something really obvious that we usually take for granted: any level surface will be used as a kind of shelf. And we will put things on it.
The coffee table. The back of the sofa. The window sill. The floor. The desk. Malc’s Law states that these settings will have a magnetic attraction for…stuff.
Most home office settings are adaptations of spare rooms, or corner refuges. They were never designed for papers, files, books, magazines, iPhone wires and so on.
So these end up on level surfaces, leading to mess and clutter for all to see. This can be stressful to work alongside and it makes us feel unprofessional. It’s often why people choose to blur their background on Zoom calls.
Consequently, we recommend that home workers invest in some kind of storage that swallows up this mess and leaves those level surfaces clear.
It can be an attractive chest of drawers or a cabinet of some sort. Doesn’t have to look like it belongs in an office. And it will hide a multitude of sins.
It will break Malc’s Law.
Until you start putting things on top of it.
(In honour of Malc, who died earlier this month after years of suffering with Parkinson’s Disease.)