She Organizes: Desk Cords

Part of the moving process has been to unplug everything, pack it up, move it, unpack it and try to plug everything back in. Before you can plug everything in, you have to make sure you have all the right cords...and believe me, that box was a nightmare!

We used to have a black computer armoire that held all of our equipment, supplies & cords. It was beneficial in two ways--being black, it automatically camouflaged all of the cords and equipment; and being an armoire, it had doors! So when I had company coming over, I could easily & quickly close the doors and the evidence of my disorganization was safely hidden away.

When we moved, that piece of furniture just didn't fit in the spot we had designated for our "office". So we went to Ikea and picked up a nice white corner desk. But it doesn't have doors. And it's white.

Which brings me to my current dilemma.

The desk sits in the corner of my kitchen/dining area and it's open to the whole house. So, the most likely spot to get cluttered is also the most visible!

So, I spent some time reorganizing it and really focused on the cord situation. I have a lot of things plugged in under there, and it's hard to tell which cord is which without spending several minutes trying to trace it back through the tangled mess to find out what it actually goes to...and trust me, I have unplugged the wrong thing before!

This is why I am so in love with my label maker. I'm sure there are other ways of doing this, but I had fun with it and so because of that, it actually got done.

Here's what I used:

My label maker,

a cable tie kit that I got on sale,

and a pair of scissors.

First, I looked around my work space and figured out what I had that was already plugged in. I have a router, a monitor, a tower, a cable box (for my phone/internet), my phone, a printer, an external hard drive, a pencil sharpener and a CD player.

I made the labels run vertically, so I could read them easier. I wrapped the top of the label around a small zip tie, and then I replaced the back of the label so the whole thing would hang more like a tag and not just stick to everything. Then I trimmed it and attached it to the cord.

Once I labeled all the cords, I went through each cord and gathered the extra length and just wrapped another zip tie around it so it was somewhat contained, instead of just laying around in a jumbled mess.

I also added these cool clips to the back leg of the desk to help gather the cords in one place to help hide them from view.