Peace of Mind Organizing

Storing my ear buds and charging cables

27 July 2020

Phone cables are vital items, used daily, but they’re such a pain to store, aren’t they? A couple of weeks ago, I revamped how I store my ear buds and phone charging cable at my desk, and I’ve been so happy. I thought I’d share here.

Some background: I have two wired ear buds I keep close at hand. One has a lightning connector to my phone. I usually use my AirPods, but sometimes they’re upstairs when I’m downstairs, so I keep a wired set handy. I also have ear buds with an auxiliary connector, left over from an older phone. I plug them into the aux jack of my podcasting microphone every week when Shannon and I record our podcast, Getting to Good Enough. And I also keep a USB/lightning cable handy for charging my wireless keyboard and mouse. That’s three cords I really want on my desk.

For the longest time, I stored these items in a leather container I bought from Levenger whose purpose is to store such cords and also serve as a phone stand. It never worked as a phone stand, but I did use it for my ear buds and cable.

Here’s a photo of it from a past post—the red arrow is pointing to it.

I used it for years, but it was actually quite annoying. The cords would get tangled within and no matter which one I needed, it was never on top. Here’s a photo of the interior. I bet you can see what I mean.

I finally put my mind to coming up with a better solution. I had just received a new charging cable from LoopyCases and it came in a pouch. That pouch, unfortunately, isn’t large enough to comfortably hold all three cables, but I had another suitable pouch. I decided to put the ear buds in one pouch and the charging cable in the other.

I found two distinctive binder clips to keep the two ear buds tangle free and distinguishable from one another and put them in one of the pouches. Here’s a photo of the clipped sets of ear buds.

I put the ear buds in one pouch and the charging cable in the other. I labeled the pouches using some black tape from IKEA and a white gel pen and put them on the bottom shelf of my monitor riser. Here’s how they look:

(I tried to find a link to the black tape, but IKEA doesn’t seem to sell it any longer. But when I run out, I’ll probably give this Scotch Expressions washi tape a try.)

I’m really happy with this solution. The cords I need are right in front of me. They’re easy to put my hands on. And, best of all, they’re not annoying!

Tagged with: clean desk, cords, desk, home office

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