Yes, I’m back from hiding with another empty promise to blog more often. :)
This one is a pretty simple and “obvious” hack. Last week Cool Tools posted a link to a simple and very ingenous device for holding those extra cords behind your desk, the Keep-a-Cable cord organizer.
While I could have just bought a pack for $5 and be done with it (and I encourage you to do so if you’re so inclined rather than rather blatantly ripping off their idea like I did), I’m just not that kind of guy. I can’t look at a flat 5-cent piece of stamped plastic and not want to make my own.
So I did. Details below the fold.
I used a lid from a plastic Sterilite storage box I had repurposed for something else. In reality you could probably make it out of a discarded milk jug or any similar source of flat plastic, but I liked the thicker plastic of the lid.
Using a ruler and a circular lid from a spice jar, I sketched out a series of half-circles with a rectangular mounting strip about an inch wide. Then I cut it out.
Then (rather crudely if you look at the pictures) I used a drill to hack out some wire-sized holes in the semi-circles and cut through to make a slot.
I used some inch-side double-stick tape to stick it to the underside of my desk. The final result turned out quite well. I hung a couple of MacBook power supply cables (yes I’ve had up to 3 Apple laptops on my desk at a time) and some Cat-6 Ethernet cables back there, and I still have a couple of spots left over. You can’t see the strip from the front side of the desk, and it hides the cables nicely.
See, told you it was easy.
Update: As suggested by some commenters, I ended up securing it to the underside of my desk with three small half-inch screws. The tape really wasn’t holding up as well as I’d hoped.