This morning I did something that really annoyed my inner minimalist to its core. I tidied up those cables around my desk.

Ever since my laptop met its fate I had to furnish my beloved minimal space with a monitor, with many cables to do just that — it’s only 2.

With the arrival of the Mac mini I had to place it somewhere where the USB port might just be accessible without putting inside the desk space because sometimes it might get a little hot (something I learned by placing my laptop there).

I then also decided that I wanted to my nice SoundSticks out on display, bringing the total amount of visible cables to too many. I like listening to ambient music when not wearing headphones, so they were ideal — even though the “auto off” function on the speakers was annoying to say the least.

Not only did that add more cables it also became clear visual clutter that I’ve been living with for a few months now. I know, first world problems.

This morning I had enough. It was annoying me so much that when I sat on the couch and looked at it, I didn’t want to go there to sit down.

So I set about to fix that by trying to better manage the cables. I moved some things around, unplugged the speakers and used the desks built in cable management to hide what I wanted.

It was a fantastic plan that didn’t work out as I wanted, although deep down my inner me was happy with the end result... the “there is too much on your desk” mindset was eating away at me.

My plan was to hide the Mac on the little rack behind the desk drawer — it’s big enough, whilst giving it enough room to breathe. That meant I fed all the cables around, made sure that my speakers were nicely set up and that the cables to the monitor wouldn’t be dangling anywhere (which they previously did). I’d feed a USB cable through in case I needed to connect my phone the Mac.

On connecting the speakers, I knew that the right hand side was already damaged by age and would have to jig the cable to get it to work. Before I set off to do the work on this, I wish I had another solution to the speakers. Then I connected it to the sub, and lo and behold, one of the pins totally was bent beyond rescue, unable to connect it to the sub.

That now left me in a kinda sad yet happy space. Now there was an excuse to clear at least four cables, plus two speakers and one sub. Those were great speakers!

I’m not a fan of cables, never have been, and I’m secretly happy with what has happened. From intent, to secret desires of not so many cables, to an acceptable cable solution that incorporates my new set up.

I still wish I had a laptop, although I am converting to having just a screen with a nice keyboard and mouse.

I left the Mini on the desk to balance it all out.

It’s absolutely bliss.