We all have a junk drawer filled with inaccessible cables. Fortunately, you don’t need to run out and buy a fancy organizer. The ideal solution may already be lying around in your kitchen.
Every Purchase, Another Cable
Tech has a cable problem. Do you bundle the necessary cables needed to charge your device or connect it to a PC, or do you assume the customer already has one? There’s no obvious right answer here.
Back when phone makers shipped charging cables and blocks with every phone, some customers complained about the excess and e-waste. Once most companies stopped, some customers accused them of greed, requiring us to now pay extra for what we used to get for free—especially with modern phones capable of fast-charging speeds that need a charging block faster than what most people have lying around.
The situation gets rapidly worse once you start buying accessories. Every mouse, regardless of whether it connects via Bluetooth or a USB receiver, comes with another cable. So do digital cameras, smart speakers, portable gaming handhelds, microphones, portable battery banks, external SSDs, and virtually anything else you might plug into a PC or phone. All of these cables have to be stored somehow. Entropy eventually leads them all into a drawer, where they get tangled into one nightmarish mass.
This is the situation I found myself not too long ago, when I grew fed up, emptied my cables onto the floor, and got to work on a fix.
The Solution Lies in the Kitchen
Many simple methods for organizing office drawers don’t quite work for cables. Tangled wires stick up over the dividers in storage trays. The twist ties that cables come with are useful for long-term storage, but who wants to unwind and rewind a cord every time they need to charge a device they use frequently?
This is why I looked to my kitchen—home of the original junk drawer—for a solution. Once there, I reached into a drawer and found, next to boxes of parchment paper and aluminum foil, just what I needed.
Freezer Bags Are a Cheap Way to Organize Cables
Nothing about freezer bags requires that they be used in a freezer. They’re just large plastic bags, capable of storing whatever needs storing. They come in multiple sizes, each allowing for organization of different-sized cables.
Which Freezer Bag Size Do You Need?
Freezer bags don’t come in only one size. Pick the size based on the length and thickness of your cables.
- 1-Quart: Ideal for most USB-C cables. I have one bag for USB-C to USB-C cables and another for USB-A to USB-C. Then there’s one for the almost extinct (at least in our household) USB-A to MicroUSB.
- 1-Gallon: These can work for heavier video cables that connect to external displays. Think HDMI, DisplayPort, and that VGA cable you aren’t quite ready to let go of. Ethernet cables might also be best served by a bag of this size, depending on how long they are.
- Sandwich bags: Technically, these aren’t freezer bags, but they’re a good fit for the tiniest cables. These are the USB-C cables that are only a couple inches long, like those that frequently come with external SSDs. You don’t want to put as many cables into a sandwich bag, since they typically don’t have as strong of a seal and are often made of thinner, more fragile plastic.
No matter which size you need, these are bags you don’t have to go to an electronics store or search Amazon to find. They’re at your local grocery, dollar, or convenience store. Many of us can pop out, pick them up, and get back home in a matter of minutes.
Use a Marker to Label Each Bag
A beauty of freezer bags is that they often come with a spot intended for labels. This saves you from needing a label maker, with the specialized paper that takes.
Just grab a marker and write what goes into each bag. This is important, lest your drawer of cables quickly morphs into a drawer of indistinguishable and mix-matched bags.
Some freezer bags don’t come with a dedicated spot intended for a label. In that case, a strip of masking tape can help. It may ultimately come out cheaper to get the unlabeled bags and a roll of making tape, but tape does peal after a while. It’s your call how tidy you want things to be.
Freezer bags are a cheap cable-management solution that you likely already have or can easily get your hands on. And when you’re done, it will look and feel like you have your life together. Plus, when a bag gets full, that’s a clear signal it’s fine to let go of a few cables. You’re not going to feel the pain of tossing one out if you have a dozen others of the same kind.
