Organizational Strategies: electronics and cords

Although you wouldn't be able to tell by the state of my room at the moment, I'm an organization nut. (A hectic week and mounds of homework result in a disaster zone, but that's another story.) Everything needs a place. A neat place. (It comes from my mother.) I am also a fan of technology. Without my computer, I would not be able to be in school or be able to write because the arthritic-symptoms in my hands would prevent me from doing a lot of hand-written work. My cameras feed my photography passion. My MP3 player brings music into my life. My Acer, although I don't use it often, gives me the ability to read books when I cannot have a physical copy on me.

What I do not love is all of the power cords and USB cords.

For the longest time I kept all of the cords together in one drawer. It was chaos! I tried to ease the madness by moving them to a basket in the drawer. While it made the drawer itself look neater, it did not solve my problem. It was worse! The cords tangled and knotted. Whenever I wanted to find a particular cord I had to dump the whole basket and search, search, search. It was so time consuming. And frustrating!

To save my sanity - and my budget - I came up with a fairly cheap and easy way to keep all those cords organized. There are a lot of awesome organizational tools out there (boxes, wire wraps, drawer dividers) but a lot of them don't work well or cost money that just isn't in my budget. So I had to get a little creative. If you want to try this for yourself all you'll need are two things: permanent markers and plastic bags. (Note: I used freezer bags from the dollar store, rather than sandwich bags because they're thicker and more durable.) 

Next, I took all of my cords and made sure I had a bag per cord (or cords, if  I'd wanted all of my USB cords together).  In the "Date and Contents" space on the bags, I wrote in permanent marker what cord(s) they were for. (Example below)

Slip the cords into their appropriate bags, seal them and voila! You're done! I've loved this so much that I even keep my MP3 Player in one now. (It keeps the headset from getting tangled and knotted.) Since keeping all of my cords stored in bags it takes no time at all to locate what I need. The cords never tangle or knot. It's a simple solution that has been a life saver!

A bunch of my cord bags on display for all of you!
Good news: the basket didn't solve the chaos problem,
but it does great at holding all of these organized cords. 

I hope some of you find this trick as helpful as I have. If you've found other cheap and easy organizational solutions, share them in the comments. Or, better yet, make your own blog post and post that link in the comments. I look forward to seeing all of your creative solutions. Happy organizing!