We all love our electronics and our gadgets, but they come with a common annoyance: cords galore!
To tame those little monsters, that get tangled to our feet and collect dust bunnies year round, here are some tricks to have the electronics AND a clean "behind the desk" area.
You can apply this to your work or the mess behind the entertainment center. Organizing it now will keep you sane, when a problem comes up and the last thing you want to deal is unorganized cables.
First things first! Start by unplugging, untangling and then by labeling each of your cables to start organizing the cables.
If the area on the floor is dirty, now is the time to grab your vacuum cleaner and clean it.
Another very inexpensive solution to label cables comes with your bag of sandwich bread! Yes, those little tags can easily become labels and they attach really well to them.
After you have de-tangled, sorted and labeled all your cords, you want to consolidate them and for that you'll have some options.
- You can simply wrap them together with cable wraps or ties (the ones that you can also use to secure your suitcase) or you can go to a really nice tool, that I love to use. It keeps all your cables nested inside the Cable Zipper and it's really easy to use.
One advice: start from the end of the cables and with your shorter cable and then gather all the other cables from there.
Do not cut the Zipper yet. You want to see the length it has to have to fit in the following step.
Cable Zipper has the labels, but they will fall from your cables. Make sure you use something else.
Once all the cables are organized, you can then, plug them back in to your power strip. Now, you can also get all your cables and the power strip in this practical "home": Cable Box. It comes in two sizes and in many colors (sorry, the cool colors only for the mini!). Bring your power strip in here, place the easy to handle lid on it and you are ready.
And, because I like options! Here is PlugHub, another way of corralling all the cables under your desk. Product from Frontgate.com
Finally, if you don't like to dig for the cables that fall behind the desk, when you remove, say, your laptop from your desktop, attach these cuties - guys, don't worry, they come in brown, black and white too! They keep all the cables in place and organized, which is so nice and makes for more productive work.
A note: considering you have all your tools in place, you will need from 30 minutes to 1 hour to complete this project.
I hope you feel motivated to organize your cables and share your results with me in the Facebook Page of Helena - A Personal Organizer!
Helena Alkhas is a Professional Organizer located in San Diego, CA and offers hands-on organizing to local clients and Virtual Organizing to world-wide clients.
I encourage you to leave your comments and if you feel I can help you with your organizing needs I invite you to contact me at helena@apersonalorganizer.com. Talk with you soon!
