Well today I decided to give the workbench area a cleanup and get rid of the paper towels once and for all, replacing them with a non-slip rubber covering that we use at my store. It's used on ships and boats, amongst other places, to prevent items like dishes from sliding about on surfaces. It also has some give to absorb impacts and reduce bouncing when things drop on it, so I figured it would be a big improvement over the paper towels.
I started off by removing everything from the work surface and it was a rather large quantity of items of all types and sizes, including my cars from our last event:
The next thing was to clean the surface of the workbench, for which I used soap on the rough side of a dishwashing sponge, but as this pic taken after the cleaning shows, it didn't get things very clean (you should have seen it before cleaning!):
Moving on to plan B, I then decided to paint the surface along with the back and exposed side walls and the result was a lot better, despite just using a single coat:
Once the paint had dried, I laid on the anti-slip rubber mat, having previously cut it to fit (as you can see, it has small holes that also prevent small items from moving/sliding around):
Finally, I replaced all the items that were originally on the workbench after first cleaning the lamp and soldering iron stand, along with their cords:
I know that that things can still bounce off the work surface, but I'm sure there'll be fewer incidents and it'll be a lot harder for small items to slide or roll off. It'll also be a lot neater than having all those paper towels spread out while working on cars.
