Properly decorating your home office

Posted by Offer Tsuriel on October 7, 2009

I have chattering teeth on my desk. Not just your standard, plastic, chattering teeth. These have big, pink feet attached. The whole thing hops around while the teeth chatter. Worth a smile the first thirty times I saw it. After that, I tried to ignore the little gizmo, which sent me telepathic signals all day: “Wind me up. C ‘mon, it’ll be fun .”
Where did this laugh riot come from? I have no idea. I assume one of my sons set it here, then forgot it.

Desks collect toys, gimcracks, gewgaws, and freebie calendars, whether they’re squatting with their mates in some big office or all alone at home. Such is their nature. If zoologists traced it back far enough, they’d find an evolutionary branch where four-legged desks split from the same primitive species that spawned the packrat.
In large offices, workers decorate their cubicles to demarcate their personal spaces and to show off their toys or family photographs. You can tell a lot about people by the artwork, cartoons, and accessories they keep on their desks. For instance, a person who uses a ballpoint pen with a large pink plume attached tends to be the fun-loving sort . A man whose desk is covered with photosof dogs, but no people, might seem shy at first, but he’ll be loyal and frien dly and will respond well to praise. A bowling trophy indicates a heighten ed appreciation for healthy activity and beer.
Desk decoration can also be a warning flag. I’ve never gotten a satisfactory answer from a secretary who had Garfield prominently displayed. Never enter into a conversation with a man who keeps on his desk a photo of his boat.
Some items are silent protests against the Powers That Be. Is there any cubicle in North America that doesn’t sport a “Dilbert” cartoon? I once worked with an unhappy woman who kept a plastic lamp on her desk. The lamp was shaped like a mushroom cloud and had a red bulb inside. When her superiors walked past, she’d flick on the light and say under her breath: “Boom. Heh-heh-heh.” We were all secretly glad when she moved away.
In a home office, you can decorate your work space any way you like. It won’t matter anyway. Everyone else in the household will consider your desk a holding area for their own junk. Soon, even that inspiring photo of your smiling spouse will be buried beneath old magazines and underwear.

In a single week, along with the chattering teeth and the usual mail, I found the following on my desk: a round plastic rock, a stuffed Roswell alien (twice), several Transformer beasts in various stages of mutation and undress, six shoes, two yo-yos, four Super Balls, a chocolate heart left over from Valentine’s Day (how did I miss that? ), seven Hot Wheels cars, a toy dump truck, two Koosh balls (don’t ask), a dead flower, nine coffee cups, three Beanie Babies, and thirty-seven dirty socks. I didn’t want any of these things on my desk. I prefer a clean, organized work space. But detritus moves through, and the magnetic desk picks it up.
The problem is worse at our house because of our dog. He picks up toys and other items around the house and chews them. He’s trained us to pry the item away, praise him for handing it over, then put the item on a horizontal surface out of his reach, such as my desk. He then fetches up another item and we do it all over again. As the numbers show, he’s particularly keen on dirty socks. I think the dog sees it as his way of cleaning the house. He finds stuff on the floor, brings it to me, and I eventually put it away. He’s just trying to help. And I’ll keep doing my part, cleaning off the desk for the next inevitable accumulationbut I’m keeping the chattering teeth.