I write this post with my feet propped up on our coffee table. I’m not usually so boorish, but this busy morning it seemed the best way to achieve the proper angle of laptop to wrists.

The coffee table on which my feet are propped is notably bare. We’ve had visitors and have tidied up in their honor. But I like the look of the polished wood so much that I may try to keep it this way: just one book and a few magazines. Often, it’s strewn with piles of printed material, which the kiddos love to slide and tear (see above).

One of my favorite (of many!) “Seinfeld” episodes features a coffee table book that becomes a coffee table. It has little legs that unfold and hold it upright. This post will not do that, creature of the ether that it is. But it will praise this humble living room surface and the items that rest upon it. In my case, often too many, but fewer moving forward, I hope.