The cable situation nobody warns you about
Every desk-setup photo you've envied has the same secret: those desks have a underside. Mine is a slab of hollow-core with nothing to mount to, which turns "cable management" into cable negotiation.
The final truce, for the record: a coiled keyboard cable (looks intentional, hides 20 cm of sins), a braided lamp line that follows the wall instead of the desk, and — the actual hero — one short flat USB-C that runs along the desk edge with two adhesive clips, so the laptop charges from the front and the long cable dangles where only my ankles know it exists.
What didn't work: a cable tray (nothing to screw it into), spiral wrap (turns into a spring when you unplug things weekly), and velcro alone (velcro alone is a rumor). What surprised me: routing everything to one side with a 65 W GaN charger. Half the cables died not through cleverness but through a single brick that could feed laptop, lamp and board at once.
Is it tidy? By hollow-core-slab standards, immaculate. Vacuum day remains a controlled operation, but it's now a two-minute operation, and I count that as the whole point of the hobby.