Flat-ish horizontal space always seems to be at a premium in any lab I’ve worked, and it always fills up. Portable area, which isn’t on the floor (less bending and lifting), is even more so — we have several carts that are supposed to be for temporary equipment, but “temporary” is subjective — sometimes the cart sits there for months on end. Since that invariably leaves nothing free, we have this:
No place for people to sit, but the frequency synthesizer and some tools/components can relax. It gets bad enough that there are times when only one lab stool is free, but it turns out not to be a big deal, since only one section of lab bench (where the best soldering station is located) is remotely likely have any free space on it.
Isn’t there some law about how any unoccupied horizontal surface in a lab will immediately get filled with equipment? I always wanted to get some of those ergonomic balls chairs just to see what would happen.
It’s what I call “lab entropy.” The filling happens spontaneously and it takes work to reduce it.