cord clutter

[funkychunkymonkey]

I HATE having cable! I have three cords, all around 20 million feet long. I keep them long so I can move the tv around but now I have a big balled up wad of various cords weged behind my tv. What do you do for this?

[wdwmom0f3]

I would buy a second set of shorter cords so that you can make a change if you need to.

[KT27]

Zip tie the longer cords to shorten them.

[bicker]

You should see the mess of wires I have in my loft. TV, antenna (as backup), DVR, DVD player, DVD burner, BD player, two full 5.1 speaker systems, a cable modem, two routers*, desktop computer, UPS, and printer -- that all on one 8 foot wide wall. Then layer on top of that wiring to feed Internet to two laptop computers on the opposite wall. Yipes! Everything starts out nice, but as soon as you have to change something, it all becomes a big mess! We try to keep it as neat as we can, but that much wiring, shoved behind a television stand, is just going to be a jumble no matter what.

I do have plastic cord chases for some of the longer runs of speaker wire and Ethernet cords, as they go around the side of the room to the opposite wall. That keeps things looking a bit neater. It doesn't sound like running wires around a room is your issue though.

* In this day and age, putting only four ports in a router is ridiculous, even for a home router: Besides the three computers (the desktop computer is an old clunker we use to backup the two laptops on to), the printer wants to be plugged into the home network, as does the DVR (to get its program information) and the BD player (to feed it Blu-ray Live content). So that's six devices that need to be connected. Even with two routers, we're "full up" (because the routers need to be connected to each other, so that takes up one port on each of them).

[mrodgers]

I haven't seen just a mere 3 cords running to a TV in 15 years!

2 cables for the satellite for the DVR (Coaxial)
1 cable from DVR to TV (S-video)
3 cable bundle from DVD to TV (RCA)
2 cables from TV to cheap POS home theater (RCA)
2 cables from DVR to cheap POS home theater (RCA)
3 cable bundle from kid's Hanna Montana "guitar hero" to TV
Telephone cable to DVR
5 speaker cables from cheap POS home theater to speakers
4 power cables

[Tiggeroo]

Periodically we clean up the spaghetti wire mess behind our tv and computer desk, which is open so you can see them. We don't do anything to these wires. But somehow, after a bit of time they become a big mess again. We zip tie and tape but always end up with a mess. I tell dh that at our house after we all go to bed the wires have a wild party. They dance around, get tangled up and quick stop when they hear us wake up. The next day there is a big mess. We hate fixing this so much. We recently began shopping around for gadgets that will help us manage it.

[suejai]

Oh, this is one of my biggest pet peeves! Vacuuming is such a pain with all the cables under tables and behind the tv. I sound like Marge Simpson - grrrr- when I'm vacuuming in the living room.

[disney1990]

Ikea makes a tube that you thread them through. I think it comes in black or white. Not a perfect solution, but looks a bit nicer.