I found a pretty good article on how to organize wires with using a combination of carabiners velcro straps and twisty ties. The nice thing about using carabiners and velcro straps is that they are easy to remove if your like me and constantly adding and removing wires. The article can be found at http://www.jonfleck.com/2008/10/11/ ... p-do-it-yourself-cable-organization/">
For identification, as soon as we purchase a new item that has a cord (printer, phone charger, etc.) I take a sticky label, write the item's name on it, and fold it onto the end of the cord near the plug. That way, you can look at the electrical strip and tell what the cord goes to.
I also label the electrical strip plugs: "Printer", "Monitor", "Phone", etc.
I use twisties or strong rubber bands to hold the excess cord.
I put those easily-taken-off hooks on the side of the actual computer tower and that's where we hang camera cords, iPod cords, etc. that don't always need to be plugged in somewhere but that need to be kept handy. Again, the excess is held together with a rubber band. (I use colorful rubber bands, b/c they look less "trailer park" than regular ones... and they make me feel happy and cheerful!)
I use a long coiled telephone cord, I cut off the ends and just wrap it around the cords. I have wrapped my TV cords with one and wraped an artifical vine around that{it shows}
I COMPLETELY reinforce the pipe cleaners, since that is what we use. A couple other ideas - go buy the little hooks for attaching christmas lights up (usually sticky on one side - clear or white) for getting any wires off the floor that lead along the floor - they're practically unnoticable attached to your trim and then you can vacuum without cords in the way. A very helpful thing is to write each item on a post-it and tape it to each cable (monitor power, CPU power, speakers) so when you need to move or unplug something, you not only know which wire to grab without tracing them ALL (and there are many) back to the source, but if you move things around, putting things back together is so much easier.
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Tip: Use Hair Clips to Organize Computer Wires
Archived on 09/19/2006
Most of us have loads of Computer wires to deal with. I also have a large collection of hair clips, some of which are too tight. So I came up with this idea and it worked. I clipped some of the hair clips around bunches of wires. This makes the wires more visible and less likely to get tangled.
Next up, the wires on my home theater!
If I don't use the hair clips, I may use bright chenille sticks (pipe cleaners).
By Linne Dodds
Answers:
RE: Use Hair Clips to Organize Computer Wires
I use those "twisties" from bread bags to hold together wound-up computer wires. This is similar to Linne's idea to using pipe cleaners. (06/29/2005)
