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Gallon Ziplocs with folded over cardstock sheets for labels, also keeps them rigid so bags of cables that aren't full don't get buried. I have two bins, one with common stuff in my office and the other stays in the basement with all the weird cables.
I’m gonna intend to do this to mine when I move next and then will completely forget about it
You can now add library cards to each with the name of the device or person borrowing the cable.
Also keep a card catalog to quickly search the cables you have and the retained library cards to find out what cables are in use by who or what!
I have like 4 drawers of cables and connectors that go back at least 2 decades of various standards and ports and configurations. So you'd think that any time I need to find a cable, it should be no big deal, right? NOPE. Can't find it, and end up having to order a new one. Sometimes I wonder why I even bother keeping any around.
You gotta do it man, once you've done it it's super easy to maintain and you can always find that cable you need. This is literally the only thing in my house that indicates a civilized person lives here, so if you organize nothing else do this.
Actually the girlfriend organized most of the cables in those drawers a few years ago but it made looking got things worse.
Bags are great for cable organization. I like one bag per item with painters tape for labeling. Big cables, like that HDMI, can be velcro'd.
I considered that but it poses a usability issue in that you have to manage the bags a lot more. You'd end up with empties or having to re-label and unnecessary overhead is the #1 cause of death for organization systems. I wanted something that I can grab a cable, and put it back in the bin with minimal effort. Wrap it, find the matching bag, insert, done. The vertical "filing" system makes the accessibility much better than a bin full of loose small bags with single cables.
I also only keep around 2 or 3 extras of most things other than super common ones like USB C cables. You probably won't ever use a 50 pin SCSI cable ever again, and even if you do, you probably aren't gonna need 7 of them.
Hard agree on multiple cables per bag.
I ziplocked my cables a bit ago and I actually ended up with surprisingly broad categories like "monitor cables" and "USB dongles" because I tossed a lot of my duplicate cables in the process. Since then I've had zero trouble finding the cables I'm looking for or figuring out where to put the cables I continue find around the house.
That sounds super wasteful.
Stores do this for every cable (unless it's a box) that's where I originally got the idea. I bought two boxes of small sandwich bags and that's been all I've needed to wrap every spare cable at work and my own cables at home.
Plastic is actually an awesome material, it's just overused. Wrapping sandwiches in these bags seems like the real waste.
Right, so now even more bags are being wasted. That's overuse.
If you already have a bunch of cables that aren't being used for anything, you're being too wasteful anyway :)
Great input. Fantastic perspective. Everyone give this person a round of applause.
Fabulous insight. Brilliant commentary. So much added to the conversation.
Yep, we both failed there. So what's your strategy for organizing cables that reduces waste without sacrificing convinience? Personally I've been using the same exact ziploc bags for 13 years, so is that really waste?
Clear plastic bins and reused cardboard boxes.
It used to be just boxes, but some of them were disintegrating after 25 years.
I've a feeling that my collection is substantially larger than y'all's, and that mine gets rotated a bit more frequently.
That's terrible. How do you expect those cables to get tangled?
🤤
