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How do you store ”loose” tech hardware?
Hesitating between posting this as a comment or a topic but here we are.
While reading this Tildes post (and the blog post) about tiny undervalued hardware, a curiosity sparked in my head.
How do you organize and store your cables, tiny hardware, and other stuff? Mine are like a bunch of rat tails tangled up inside a plastic box.
I live in a small apartment (for now) and would like to hear your thoughts. And recommendations.
We don’t have to limit ourselves to just wires and cables. For example, I also have old phones, external CD players, etc.
Bonus points if it’s portable and you could travel with your “tiny hardware”.
I generally use old shoe-boxes or boxes from smaller products. I neatly organize the items by type and coil all of the cables. Then some time later when they've reverted to being a kudzu patch I do it all over again.
I desperately want a better system, especially for organizing cables. Send help.
I dealt with this my entire life before I solved it. I tried just wrapping the cables up neatly, they would come un wrapped and turn into a mess. I tried ziptying cables, they got tangled anyway and I had to clip the zip ties every time I needed a cable and the edges could be sharp. When Velcro cable management strips came out, I used those. They're ok, but the cables would still get tangled inside each other.
Here's what works great for me: Ziploc bags. Every cable gets an individual Ziploc bag. It keeps everything near and organized, and I keep all my cables in a series of plastic organizer bins by type. The Ziploc bags mean the cables are impossible to get tangled with one another, and I can stand the bags up straight sorta like files in a cabinet. it's by far the best system I've found
Edit: also my categories are as follows:
Data (mostly different kinds of USB cables, some old serial cables too)
Network (Ethernet cables)
Digital video (HDMI/DVI/Display port cables of all varieties)
Audio/analog video (RCA cables, Component cables, TRS cables)
Gaming (weird console cables and peripherals)
These work very well for me and each category has a 1'x1' box that they fit nicely into. Your mileage may vary based on your collection.
I do the same thing, but with small groupings of cables by type per bag to save on bags. I've found that this still prevents most tangles while keeping everything relatively neat.
Those plastic cable wrap management rolls aren't too bad you can snip those into the right size for the cable, leaving only the connector poking out for easy recognition.
Bit more space intensive and while cheap it's not free. Works well though.
Do you use something to tie the cables or just sort of coil them up so they’re stable as a coil?
Velcro ties are my go-to. Then, invariably, they get pulled a little bit so they're no longer coiled perfectly and one end doesn't reach the Velcro strap and it has to dangle free.
I highly recommend just getting a large roll of Velcro and cutting it yourself. The entire surface is Velcro, so you shouldn't run into this problem.
I think what they meant is that the last loop of the coil only goes 80% of the way, so it isn’t long enough to reach the velcro.
You need to Velcro in 2 points on the coil. Any 2 will do, but best is just behind the head of each end. This prevents the loose-end-getting-pulled-and-shrinking-the-loop problem.
I bought a huge roll of velcro cable ties that I use for a lot of cables. For smaller / shorter cables, like phone charging cables, I just let them hang free.
I would suggest giving a go to toilet paper rolls for organising cables, if you use tall enough boxes or drawers they can be handy!
I love this Idea!
I pack related items (cables of the same kind, for example) in the same ziplock bag. All ziplock bags then go into a plastic storage crate. It's a good compromise between effort / space required in organising and effort required to find stuff I need later.
The most organized I've gotten is having a few cardboard boxes on a shelf labeled "USB", "A/V", "POWER", and "MISC", which more or less satisfies my needs. Everything in there is rat tail tangles though, which is definitely not ideal. I'd really like to figure out something more organized/clean, but the barrier right now is my own forgetfulness/laziness when it comes to putting cables back where they belong.
I suck at this and am here to learn from you all.
My "organized" is thrown into several unmarked foldable fabric boxes and ultimately losing them to the sands of time AKA our basement. 🤦🏻♂️
I turn all my cables into neatly coiled circles and double wrap them with Velcro cable ties. Bigger stuff goes into the graveyard in my storage room, and it’s as disorganized as you might expect.
We share the same spirit.
For cables, for the past 3 or so years I’ve been doing something I saw somewhere (want to say reddit, maybe), where you take one of those cheap clear vinyl door-hanging shoe organizers and use each of the shoe cubbies for a particular type of cable. I have mine hanging on the inside of the door of my closet. Works great.
Here’s somebody else’s photo of a similar setup.
Yep, this is what I do as well. It's been the best cable storage system I've tried so far.
It’s kind of funny. I didn’t post it because I thought it was a bit too negative, but I wanted to comment that all of that stuff they mentioned felt like it were e-waste in the making. I have countless drawers and boxes filled with miscellaneous adaptors, bespoke hardware, media drives, and oh-so-many cables. And that is without extraneous 90° adaptors and odd specialty Bluetooth hardware. Any utility I would have gained from those dongles would have been more than counteracted by my ability to lose them and all the time I would spend looking for them. It’s best to stick to the necessities.
Thanks for commenting anyway! I try my best, and I would imagine others here as well, to minimize the e-waste.
Most of my “collection” are actually wires that came from products that included them in the box, some external “used rarely” hardware like a CD player or XBox controllers.
I was indeed curious about the quality of the dongles partly because I don’t want to encourage e-waste but the more selfish reason is I don’t want to spend money and time on something that would just not work as well… or even worse… destroy my other devices because it’s not compatible or compliant.
I mostly try not to store such things. How many HDMI cables do I actually need that aren't already plugged into my TV? How many USB cables can I even plug in simultaneously? Network cables? What even is that one, can't be SCSI can it? Jesus. Get in the bin!
I have one small drawer of currently-used chargers and charging cables - a few standard usb micro/c/mini and an annoying large amount of USB on one end and proprietary on the other - and another small box of assorted cables which, every time I add something to, I go through and remove anything I haven't needed for a while (especially if the device I used it with has moved on)
Then there's this one time in 2017 where I needed this odd console port cable to access the management console of an old switch where I was overjoyed I didn't bin it. The fact that I still remember it.. unbeatable high let me tell you.
I have all kinds of old cords, parts and electronics in 4 clear plastic tubs and on a couple shelves that could fill another tub or 3. I really need to go thru it all, I'm fairly sure I haven't seen the bottom of a couple of those tubs in 10 years. 😓
Edit: Oh and they're all neatly organized and totally not just randomly tossed in and looking like some kind of cyber-rat's nest. 😅
The closest I’ve come to a solution involves separation and labeling. I try to keep doohickies in their original boxes. If that doesn’t work, I’ll label a ziplock and put all the related pieces in there with it, then into a drawer. I’ve also started doing this with stuff I put together, like furniture. Put the little hex key and wherever bolts or whatever I’m the bag and label it “tripod lamp” or whatever. This has the nice side effect of keeping garbage hardware out of the toolbox.
For cables, I make a string of two labels on my label maker, then another two. I make a little flag at both ends of the cable but folding the flag in half attend it, so the words stick together. Tape would also work, but Im my handwriting is too big for it to be practical. Examining a crowded usb port hub that has labels like “razer camera” and “dpa mic” has probably saved me hours of tracing cables. For more generic cables, “usb 3->usb c” or “hdmi->hdmi”. For storage I coil them up and secure with cable ties or a couple of long strips of Velcro. I’m trying to optimize for finding stuff, so I’ll use more ties for unruly cables. Then they go in my storage drawers. When I dig through them, they stay separated and tell me what they are.
I’m constantly evolving how I handle this. Of course cables end up just thrown in there sometimes, so I’ll take ten minutes to handle those. When I am outgrowing where I keep them, I do a culling. I probably got rid of over a dozen usb to mini usb cables. I’m pretty sure some of those came with phones. All of those old phones are lurking around in boxes somewhere, along with old laptops and an N64 that I refuse to part with.
I have a wardrobe thing full of drawers that I use to limit my categories of stuff. If it doesn’t fit in the box, I either need to not get it or get rid of something else.
Stackable bins! They great for organizing small items; make efficient use of volume while being easily accessible.
Cables I typically coil and fasten with twist ties. (Velcro is better, but the vast majority of cables come with their own ties.) Other items that are less likely to get tangled can go loose in a bin.
I have been unable to keep track of twist ties for more than 5 minutes since I got cats.
I bought a crap ton of velcro cable ties from AliExpress and rolled up every cable I wanted to keep and put them in plastic bins organized by type. I have an A/V bin, USB bin, power cord bin and miscellaneous bin. Small devices go in another plastic bin.
I have one box with larger cables coiled with onewrap velcro. And then for all the micro USB, mini USB, etc. I standardized to USB-C double-ended cables and have tiny adapters for the rest. They live in a little wooden box. I really only ever need 2-3 USB cables at a time, so that works fine for me.
Junk drawer.