How do I keep my work-from-home desk tidy?

Tidy desks are a habit with hardware support, not the other way around. The habit: a two-minute reset when you log off — cups to the kitchen, paper to the inbox tray, tools to their drawer slots. It works because every object has exactly one assigned home; the moment two places are acceptable, neither is. Calendar it with your shutdown routine for the first two weeks and it sticks.

The hardware that supports it costs under $60 total: one letter tray as the single sanctioned paper landing zone, a drawer divider ($15–25) so returns take one second, an under-desk headphone hook ($8–12, Command or screw-mount), and velcro ties on every cable so nothing tangles into staying out. A desk pad marks the work zone — objects drifting onto it get evicted at reset.

Weekly, empty the inbox tray to zero: file it, act on it, or bin it. That ten-minute Friday pass is what stops the tray becoming a sediment layer. If something keeps returning to the desk — a charger, a notebook, the label maker — that is data, not failure: give it a desk-adjacent home like a wall hook or the top drawer, and the surface stays clear without willpower.