Cables

Every time my dear husband brings home another gadget, the box spews out wires, cables and random other stuff that drags itself across, around and through the room.

It gathers dust, it gets twisted up and, possibly most annoying, it just keeps growing. When new cables arrive, they get shoved in on top of the old ones, and what order you had disappears. Of all the things on my cleaning rota, I think sorting out the cables is possibly the thing I least look forward to. With all the dust gathered and hidden, it’s easy to let it sit and fester for quite some time.

Ultimately, it has to be done. Regain the order in your cable cupboard.

First things first: there’s no point trying to organise your cables with everything connected. Turn all the appliances off, unplug everything and drag it out from whatever cubby-hole you’ve managed to hide it in.

Carefully untwist all the cables and lay them cables out in lines across the floor, or over the back of a chair, if you don’t want little feet to run all over them. With a multi-purpose wipe, or some spray on a piece of kitchen roll, grab a cable and wrap the wipe completely around the diameter, then wipe the whole cable from end to end. When you reach the plug ends, gently wipe away any dust. Would you believe that it really is black or white?!

With the cables wiped down, turn your attention to all of the gadgets and appliances that house the cables. You can buy little computer cleaning kits if you want to go to town (literally and figuratively), but using a hose attachment on the vacuum will do just as good a job. Clean away the dust!

Next up is the cupboard, drawer or whatever else it is that holds the appliance. Give it a thorough clean. Make sure you’ve pulled out CDs, DVDs and everything else you store in there as well. It should be completely clean before you start re-organising and putting it all back in.
With everything clean, now is the time to put everything back.

Consider carefully where everything needs to go. If you’re cleaning the computer table or desk, look at how long the cables for the items you place furthest from the socket. Plan your cabling so that all the cables reach the appliance comfortably. Investing in a cable basket and some ties will give you quite a lot of extra stretch. By organising your cables into a basket that can be attached to the back of the desk or TV bank, you’ll also not need to endure the eyesore of having the piles of cables poking out on the floor.

Some people label each cable, so when it comes time to remove on item, they don’t have to spend hours following it to find its end. I am a fan of looping each cable and tying it to its shortest required length, so I don’t have lengths of cable trawling across my floor.
Tying cables that go in the same direction will also neaten the cable forest. Go one step further and get cable casing to hold it all in a neat tube, which is much less of an eyesore.

There are many cable solutions on the market, so it’s just a matter of finding what best suits you. It doesn’t matter what solution you use, though, the issue of dust and the need to clean will always be there simply because electric appliances draw dust more than anything else.

Stop procrastinating and sort those cables out.