Maureen has discovered the antidote to the Scary Drawer O'Random Chargers!
My past attempts to keep charger cords tidy were to wrap them up and use a twist tie to keep them together. But if I have to stretch the cord out to charge my device, I don't always take the time to recoil it, and then the drawer where I keep the cords turns into a tangled nest of wires. Plus, there are so many chargers, it's hard to quickly find which one I want.
See?
Enter: toilet paper tubes! It's faster to coil up a cord and stuff it in a tube than to twist tie it. The tubes keep the chargers separated, and I can write on the tube which device the charger goes to. Have a look:
TAAAA-DAAAHHHHH! Maureen, are you hearing the thunderous applause?
What can I say? This is a perfect hack.
I do have another method for organizing chargers and small electronics, courtesy of my dear friend and primo professional organizer Nadine Levy of Management 180: the handy-dandy over-the-door shoe pocket organizer. Store one electronic device and its associated charger in each pocket (labeled, if you like).
Any more tips for keeping chargers organized?
Related: Uses for over-the-door pocket organizers
And: Other hacks involving toilet paper rolls
More: Tips for organizing your home
I also use my handy-dandy label-maker to label each charging plug (for cell phones, this is often the black transformer box … why they can’t standardize this item is beyond me). I’ll put something like “Bob’s phone – blue Samsung” to make it clear to anyone which item the charger is for. This would help in case the toilet paper roll gets misplaced or destroyed.
I also saw at Staples the new Martha Stewart line of office products, which includes some fancy rubberbands w/labels that would probably work for this purpose.
I use plain old Ziplock sandwich bags and a Sharpie. Sometimes, electronics come with multiple cords and odd-shaped accessories so those would fit better in a bag than a tube. Plus, you can store the instruction booklets in the bag as well. And nothing falls out if they were to get jumbled up in a drawer or basket, which is where most of my cords live.
I bought a couple of items at the Container Store that help, but I’m loving the low cost and high functionality of this. And, of course, I still have many more cords to organize.
I like to put a label on the plug end or on the cord with a tag so that when it’s plugged into a surge strip I can unplug the right plug(this also works great for TV,VCR,DVD etc.)that way you don’t unplug the wrong things.
Instead of labeling it “Fred’s phone”, I label it Droid 2. In our house, we tend to get new phones often and keep a few old ones in case one breaks. (This happens often enough that the extra clutter is justified. Our old phones have come in handy for friends too). I also use a label maker to label the actual charger. We have tons of chargers and this avoids any confusion. I so desperately wish there was more compatibility with chargers.
I have one drawer in the kitchen for electronics. Inside the drawer are several small boxes (old stationary, jewelry and check boxes) and a few strawberry baskets all lined up. Each has a label in the bottom with the name of the cord and what device it goes with. The cords themselves are simply coiled inside each box or rubberbanded, if it’s a huge, honkin’ cord.
This cost me no money to make/install and it works amazingly well. The key is to label the bottom of each box so the rest of the family remembers where to put everything.
Great post! I love how useful this site is!
This is brilliant.
LOL… Look some creative idea.. Like this one..
Where has this idea been all my life? Or at least the last decade? This is going to go far toward increasing harmony in the home.
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