At your work station you can use a wire basket under your desk to stash cables or other containment strategies. What about for cables you take with you for laptops and portable devices?
We’re all about creative cable management here at Lifehacker, so we were instantly drawn to reader Seandavid010′s rain-gutter cable management setup.
We’re already big fans of anything that corrals our cord clutter, but we can’t help but appreciate the craftsmanship that went into this very clever DIY earbud owl.
We’ve featured tons of cord decluttering tips over the years, but cable lacing is a simple, classic method of cord management that we’ve somehow overlooked.
If you’re a contact lens wearer with a cluttered stockpile of extra lens cases, don’t toss them out. Use them to protect your bud-style headphones. Instructables user Mowdish shows how to modify an old contact case to both stash your ear buds and keep the wires from getting tangled up. You simply cut away enough material from the side of the case to accommodate the stem of the ear bud when the cap is screwed back on. As shown in the photo above, you can cut away the plastic to make a perfectly sized slot for your particular style of ear buds. Not a contact wearer, or not sure where to drum up a contact case you can mod? Try asking real friendly-like at an optical store, or check out some previously posted methods for keeping your headphones tangle free—the DIY ear bud cord caddy is a starter. more details and pictures, check out Mowdish’s full tutorial below. Thanks Adam!
Ear Bud Case from a Contact Lens Case [Instructables]Flexicord takes an unusual approach to managing cables: it ships in a coiled form, but “remembers” the shape you stretch it into (rather like the bendy toys of my childhood). End result? Once cables are positioned, they won’t move, but a protective layer ensures data isn’t corrupted and wires don’t snap. The one in the shots (shown off at the CES Unveiled event this week) is an HDMI cable, but what I’d really like is the USB model for my home office. It’s only a prototype for now (commercial release is scheduled for later this year), but a useful option to bear in mind for future cable management projects.
DIY home web site FineHomebuilding has a nice guide demonstrating how to wrap large cords and hoses for clutter-free storage while avoiding twists and kinks. With a medium-gauge cord, for example: I drape the line back and forth over my hand until I have a few feet left. Then I tie off the bundle with the remaining cord and create a loop to hang it with.
The post itself has more detailed instructions for medium- and heavy-gauge cords, along with air hoses. If you’ve got a preferred method you stick to when wrapping your large extension cords or hoses, let’s hear it in the comments. Wrapping cords and hoses [FineHomebuilding via Apartment Therapy]
Reader LT writes in:
I hate climbing behind my desk to plug in my laptop to charge when I get back to my office, and I can’t afford one of those new Mac displays that come with a laptop plug built in any time soon, either. But then I saw this trick using a binder clip to keep cords from slipping off the back of the desk. My MacBook’s power cord has two parts—midway through it the brick plugs into another cord, and I never take the bottom half of the cord with me. So, using the clip, I secured the first half of the plug to the desk, and now I plug in the brick when I get to the office—no climbing required.
Gave this a try with my own MacBook, and it works like a charm, as you can see in the pictures. Thanks, LT! Check out our top 10 ways to get cords under control.
