A 31-inch desk gives you roughly the width of a laptop plus a notebook plus a mug. That is genuinely enough to work on — right up until the surface starts doing a second job as storage. Then it is a shelf you happen to type on.
The trick with a compact desk is not clever furniture. It is moving everything that is not actively in your hands off the horizontal surface, in five specific directions.
Up: the screen
On a small desk a riser does something it does not do on a big one — it creates a second level. The screen goes up, and the footprint it was occupying becomes keyboard parking. A compact riser like the Enkel is sized for exactly this; the wide models are built for desks you do not have.
Down: the drawer you never got
Compact desks almost never have drawers. Add one. A Glid Hidden Under-Desk Drawer at $38 mounts under the desktop and holds pens, cables and the small flat things that otherwise live in a pile. The Sklie Slide-Out Under-Desk Drawer does the same with more depth.
This is the single highest-return change on a small desk, because the pile of small objects is what makes a desk feel full.
Sideways: the corner
The back corner of a desk is dead space. You cannot reach it comfortably and you cannot work in it, so it accumulates. A Hjorne Folding Corner Shelf at $24 turns it into two usable levels and folds flat when you want the desk back.
Off the edge: clamp, do not place
Anything that can clamp to the edge should. A Klemme Clamp-On Desk Shelf adds surface area without taking any, because it hangs off the perimeter rather than standing on the desk.
Underneath: the power strip
Covered properly in our cable plan, but it matters double on a small desk. A strip and its plugs take up as much room as a keyboard. Get it underneath.
If you are still choosing the desk
The Smal 31" Compact Desk at $62 is the narrowest we carry and fits a bedroom corner. If you have another nine inches, the Kryss 40" X-Frame Desk is a noticeably different experience for $89 — the extra width is where a notebook goes. And if the room has to do more than one thing, the Rulle Height-Adjustable Side Desk rolls away entirely when you are done.