Saturday, December 12, 2009

Cleaning Cable Clutter

Cleaning Cable Clutter 

I have a drawer near my computer, stuffed with cables and extension cords and it is always a tangled mess. Every wire except my ipod is black, so it is impossible to quickly distinguish between various recharges for my cameras, or their corresponding USB cables. Necessity is the mother of invention, right? Too much frustration led me to finally organize this mess. I decided to make a colorful, easy to recognize, stuff sack for each ...appliance (for lack of a better word). Anything unworthy of a stuff sack would be tossed (or donated to the technology Goodwill Center). So, here is my collection: One yellow stuff bag with numbers for my cell phone recharger One turquoise bag with an abstract camera image and the word "Nikon" for my recharger and USB cable for the Nikon camera. One red and pink bag for my monitor calibration system (eye-one). One turquoise bag with an abstract ipod image for my ipod recharger. One pink and orange flower bag for Pinkie (my little Fuji camera) for the recharger and different sized USB connecting cable. Most are stuff sacks with a drawstring, lined, and quite fun and easy to make. One has a zipper (because I wanted to try it). All are easily recognizable, and roomy enough to hold the contents. And, as an added bonus, when I am ready to travel, it will be so easy to grab exactly which stuff sacks to pack, and while I am gone, easy to find them in my suitcase! I am super happy with the results. It was a bit time intensive, as is all organization projects. However, being unorganized is also time consuming. The following are before cleanup, after cleanup, and the recycle pile.

8 comments:

Vickie Hallmark said...

Darn, you're clever, girl!

I want my drawer to look like that!

Stacy Hurt said...

YOU. ARE. BRILLIANT!

Joy said...

I love those... what a great idea... you should sell them. :)

Margeeth said...

I just love this. And you also manage to get rid of a lot of stuff (unless you have a husband like mine, who wants to keep all electrical stuff).

Paula, the quilter said...

It's funny you called them appliances. Back in the day, just before early retirement from a huge tech corporation, that was the the buzz word for hand held devices.

Winter Wanderings said...

Fabulous idea & colorful (as we'd all expect from you!). Now to see if I can make time & energy to do the same with our loose-pack wires & etc. stuff-drawer ....

Danielle said...

love this idea, how clever!

Rayna said...

This is so clever - I think I need to steal this idea...but I hate to sew.