Sometimes an invention comes up and you can’t help but wonder, “Why didn’t I think of that?”

Have you ever been sitting at your desk and munching your way through your lunch, only to find yourself later in the afternoon manically shaking your keyboard upside down to dislodge the crumbs? Or maybe you’ve even taken the Hoover to it, only to then have to take the Hoover apart minutes later to retrieve keys that have been accidentally sucked up?

Well, before you head down to the basement to create a solution to this problem, you’re too late, Kong Duck-young has beaten you to it! The Korean designer from office furniture maker ‘Steelcase Inc’ has created a shelf designed to sit above your keyboard, giving you the perfect resting place for your coffee and sandwich, whilst still allowing you to reach the keys effectively. With around 75% of office workers choosing to opt for desk-dining, as opposed to sitting down to a meal out of the office, this creation is sure to interest many crumb-conscious workers.

By creating a space within the office away from people’s desks, some bosses offer an alternative to resorting to the keyboard tray. The Energy Project has recently launched, ‘Take Back Your Lunch’, a project encouraging workers to take their lunch away from their computer screens. Studies have shown that taking time away from your desk, or even your office altogether, can help workers come back more refreshed, focused and ready for the later part of the day.

A simple and easy first step could be offering your workers a coffee table and chairs away from the main office area, why not take a look at BT Office Furniture‘s range of wood and glass coffee tables? This will allow workers a small sanctuary away from their work where they can take a few minutes out and recharge their batteries, allowing for a more energetic and enthused afternoon.

It seems though, with these trends of munching in front of our monitors increasing, your employees may take a little convincing to break the ties with their desks. So, until we learn to escape for an hour around midday and find a nice bench to sit on, it seems we should all give in and buy Kong Duck-young’s keyboard tray and save the Hoover for items below the desktop!