Most every home out there will have some electronic devices that are used often and must be plugged into a wall outlet. We tend to grow attached to our electronic friends: lamps, coffee makers, phones, televisions, game consoles, you name it. But many of these items have unsightly cords that just hang around and do nothing to add to our perfectly decorated homes. In this post, we will list several DIY tips for hiding and maintaining those pesky cords. This will make your home electronics easier to use, safer, and more attractive.
Label!
First of all, and probably the easiest thing on this list, you should label your cords at the end that plugs into the wall. This makes it easy to know which plug goes with which appliance and is hugely useful when you have a jumble of many cords in one place (such as behind the entertainment center or computer). There are many great products out there made for this purpose. Some are color coded. some have images of the device on the label. Some are uniquely and playfully shaped. But they would all do the job just fine.
There is another option too. If you want to keep your DIY spending to a minimum, you can use items that you have laying around your home. When you purchase bread, bagels, buns, and even tortillas at the grocery store, they often come in a plastic bag that is closed with a twist tie or a small, square piece of plastic with a hole cut into it. Put the twist ties aside, for now, we’ll come back to these later. Take a look at those small plastic squares. These are perfect for up-cycling into tags for your electronics. They can be written on using permanent markers and then attached to the appropriate cord.
Bundle Up Your Cords
The next easy fix on our list is Rolling up extra cord! It’s a common problem when you place electronics close to the electrical outlet that you might end up with WAY too much extra cord. and usually that cord just gets dumped behind the appliance next to the outlet. To fix this unsightly mess and make it simpler to locate and move certain cords, you can use a rubber band or those twist ties mentioned before to organize these tangles.
Simply roll the excess cord into neat little coils and use the twist tie to keep the cords bundled together. This tie makes it easy to uncoil more cord if ever you need to and keeps everything neat and tidy behind your appliances.
Cord Organizing Tools
Home surround sound systems are one of the many electronics that can leave our living rooms covered in cords. In many cases, the cords must wrap around the room. There are many nifty gadgets and tools made for running cords around a room including plastic or metal strips that run around the walls or small plastic holders like the ones above. There is also a way to hide them that requires no extra fixings, just a ruler.
You can also hide unsightly cords under an area rug. A stylish shag or flatweave rug will do wonders.
Using a slim ruler or paint stick, you can tuck the cords between the carpet and the baseboard in your room. This will keep the cord hidden as well as minimize any hazard of tripping.
Hide Your Cords
This tip is particularly clever and requires no altering of furniture, You simply put a power strip in the drawer of a kitchen counter or bedside table and sneak the cord out the back of the drawer and down through the inside of the case. You only have one item plugged into the wall and you can hide all your other cords in the drawer.
Design Around It
My absolute favorite tip here is to incorporate cords into a whimsical design. If you purposely draw attention to a cord in a creative way, rather than being an eyesore, it can accent the design of your home.
I hope these DIY tips are super useful to you and you can keep electrical cords from being an eyesore in your gorgeous home. Please share this post if you found it useful!
