9 Easy Solutions to Hide Desk Cords - Career Advice Blog for Millennials

9 Easy Solutions to Hide Desk Cords - Career Advice Blog for Millennials It’s hard enough to balance the demands of the everyday office without having to tackle the nightmare of detangling desk cords. Your toes nudge against the wiry mass, and all of a sudden you’ve turned off your computer. Which cord goes to what? Next to all the paperwork, the tangled mess of cords resembles some impenetrable jungle from a fairy tale. It’s unseemly to your professional eyes. Declutter your desk all you like, but the jungle of cords still mocks your organization skills. Well, not today, cords. Not today! Check out these nine solutions to hide desk cords and reclaim your workspace: 1. Safely Run Wires Under a Rug Snake some of your cords under a decorative rug to keep them out of sight and out of toe range. If you slip all the cords under a rug, they bunch up, go everywhere and create a fire hazard. Don’t use cords that overheat easily. Place cords under decorative rugs that are smaller and can be secured with electric tape. Whenever possible, run wire along a wall to minimize stepping on them. 2. Cord Clips A simple run to a home improvement store will get you a few self-adhesive cord clips in a pack for around $5. They are translucent and blend right into the wall, desk or surface of choice. Use these to secure cords in place along the edge of your desk or run cords along the walls. Bigger clips or bundling cords also exist to network particular sets of cords together. Round those cords up and show them who’s boss! 3. Paintable Cord Covers If running cords along the wall is too unappealing aesthetically, conceal them with cord covers. Instead of multicolored cords against a gray wall, paintable cord covers blend right in if you paint them the same color as the wall. 4. Memory Boxes Turned Cord Keepers Use adorable memory boxes with a slot cut out of the side to cleverly box away and conceal a router. This will protect the router from your wandering toes, too. Memory boxes come in many types to tie in with your office décor, easily picked up at a craft store. However, a shoe box repurposed with wrapping or scrapbook paper will also get the job done in a pinch. 5. Binder Clips If your sanity has seconds to spare and a trip to the store isn’t in the cards today, break out the office supplies to do battle against the cords. Binder clips are the perfect stand-in solution for cord clips. Fit them on the cords you’d like to group together and slip them out of sight. A screw with a tiny washer will fit perfectly inside one of the handles to secure each binder clip along any shelf, wall or desk. 6. Shower Curtain Rod Covers Got cords dangling from the wall? Your office may not be a big fan of drilling into the wall to hide the cords. The next solution is to pick up a shower curtain rod cover at any home improvement or hardware store. Before hiding the cords inside the rod cover, it may be helpful to sand the plastic rod lightly and paint it the same as the wall color. All you really need to do is measure the cord length you want to hide and cut the rod to the same size. Slip the cords right into the rod cover, and the tension of all the cords bundled together will keep them in place. 7. Spiral Wraps It’s not a strange new lunch sandwich, but it’ll do to keep your cords secure and out of the way. Also known as wire harness wraps, some spiral wraps have super powers because they glow in the dark and are fire-resistant. Like a long slinky, the spiral wraps snake around the cords and harness them inside. 8. Stash Cords in a Drawer Have a deep desire to dump all the cords into a black hole? Here’s the next best thing: Stash your power strip in the top drawer of a small side table or your desk, even if it’s for charging smaller electronics. While some people use every desk drawer, others have empty desk drawers just waiting to be stuffed with cords. Less visible cords equals less mental chaos. 9. Staple Them Down Ever look at your staple gun, look back to your power strip and smile thoughtfully? Do so now. Enjoy it, because those cords are going down! Carefully run the cords out of the way along a wall or the side of your desk, and staple those pesky cords into place. To secure extra cord length, consider stapling the cords underneath the top of your desk. What does your cord collection look like at the office? What creative solutions do you have for controlling the chaos? Keep the conversation going by commenting below, and subscribe to Punched Clocks to receive more advice for your career path. Get everything you need to build a career you love by signing up for the newsletter.