Saturday, March 24 2012

Awhile back, I was sent the mass email entitled, “24 Clever Ideas to Make Your Life Easier“. Now, I usually don’t read mass emails, but the title intrigued me.  Who doesn’t want things to be easier once in a while?   And, clever, you say?Well, I am glad I opened it.  (Note:  I received more than one of these emails, each titled the same,  and each had a different set of clever ideas. Bonus!)  One of the ideas shared was that pictured below; labeling your cables.

I found this picture, which was used in the email,  on Apartmenttherapy.com.

Apartment Therapy mentions that labeling both ends is best.

So, and this is how much of a freak I can be, for 5 months I only allowed my husband, the Shopper, to buy bread with white plastic tags.  In my mind, the colors in the above pictures look unorganized as well, so I wanted all the same color (white is a color to me) to label my cables.

I had the exact place to start on this project, too.  The disorganized mess of growing technology boxes behind my new geometric doors.

 It was getting out of hand!With the doors open, the cables were such tangled mess!  

So, I disconnected them all; untwisting, labeling, laying them in order of height, and shortening them into more manageable lengths by bunch with rubber bands.    “Now what are you doing?!”  (Oops!, I guess I should have checked the March Madness schedule!)

I placed my labels closest to the actual device they were plugged into.  We are pretty cable knowledgeable, so an explanation on each and a label on each end was not necessary for us.  Organization was.  I wrote ‘D TV power’ and ‘Ipod’ and ‘DVD 2 TV‘ in an effort to keep it simple.

After only about 15 minutes of unplugging, untangling, wrapping, labeling and replugging…ahhh! so much better.  Of all those cords, only three were actually necessary to see, the three power cords.  All of the others attach from box to box, of course, depending on the function.  As you can see, this leads to  more space! This extra spot is  perfect for concealing our 3D glasses, extra modem (for attaching computer to TV), camera cable, and other random things that were usually just thrown on top of one of the black boxes.  I bought the green fabric box from Target, and it fits the space just right.  Yes, there are still some cables crossing in the ‘dead’ space, but there isn’t much I can do about it.  The trio of black boxes is actually hiding the hole in the wall which carries our bundle of stereo speakers, the TV cables, and the radio wires for the house system.  I considered moving the boxes over to the left, but then there would be more wires stretching between.   Closing the doors actually hides the power cords nicely.

Funny how such a simple thing can make a girl happy.

Everyone else was happy when the basketball tournament came back on!

Above, the close-up with the doors closed now.  I enjoy seeing the pop of green back there.  Our woven bins hold DVD’s and home movies on the left and coloring books and a bag of markers on the right.

That’s all for now.  Thank you to those of you that sent me those ’24 clever Ideas’ and the motivation to do something about that eyesore!

~Laura

Images: 1 & 2) Apartmenttherapy.com,  3-9) Laura for monkeysonmyback