Keep Your Cords Organized With The Help Of This Office Staple

Minor daily frustrations come in many forms, but there is nothing quite as obnoxious as knotted-up cords, especially when you're seconds away from a dying device. As your battery slowly drains, you find yourself trying to untangle feet of cables, and the irritation sinks in. While you can find store-bought cord detanglers from stores like IKEA to deal with clutter, there's a simpler solution that costs less than $10 and will give you long-term fixes with backups for new cords as they come along. Binder clips may have had their time in the limelight when school supplies entailed more than a laptop or iPad, but even if you don't have a stack of papers that need binding, you can use these clips as cable storage holds for each of your cords until they are ready for use — and all you need is a space to anchor them to!

Keeping your cables bunched up is a sure way to find yourself untangling them for hours, but threading each one individually through the metal prong of a binder clip will create a holder that prevents the plugs or docks from falling out while keeping the length separated and off the floor.

The trick to this hack is finding a base where you can anchor the black part of the binder clip before lacing your power cables through. If you have a work-from-home desk that is no more than 5 inches thick, you can use the largest clip to organize and hide your cables. Open the clip and insert it onto the edge of your desk or table, preferably at the back or on the sides to avoid catching the cords as you go about your tasks. The metal prongs should stick out away from the desk, and this is where you will thread the tops of your cables through with the docks sitting outside the top prong.

The docks should keep the cord from falling through the prong if you move it down toward the base of the binder clip where the metal is thinner. You might need to lift the prong up and pull the cable through the largest part, then push the metal flush against the clip that rests on the desk. You can also get creative and place multiple binder clips on a chair, lamp, or shelf — any surface small but sturdy enough to anchor it will work. If you purchase an assorted pack like this Amazon variety binder clip clamp pack for $6.99 at the time of writing, you can swap out different sizes to suit your appliances accordingly. Place clips in a single-file line down the surface of your choosing to make the DIY holder look tidy and uniform. Voilà: No more knots.