Depending on the size of your home entertainment or office setup, you may have excess cord bundled everywhere. Apart from putting anyone in your household at risk of tripping over, those tangled mess of wires and cables is also a fire hazard. Eliminate cord clutter in your home by following these simple tips:
Tie them up
Bundle similar sets of cables together using cable ties. Tying up audio-visual cables and power cables separately will not just minimise the mess, it will also help avoid signal interference.
Put labels on them
One of the annoying things about having all those cords in a mess is that you can’t remember which is which. To figure out which wire connects to the right device or appliance, you would have to tug each one of them. If you are not careful, you might end up unplugging the wrong cable by mistake. Save yourself the trouble by using labels to mark each cord. Use different colours so you can easily determine which wires go with your TV, computer and other electronics.
Hide them
Your home theatre will look more impressive if there are no visible wires to distract you. Instead of stringing the wires along the wall haphazardly, run them along the ceiling or underneath the carpet using cable tacks.
Remember to use the right size of cable tacks for each cord as the wrong tacks can pinch or damage the cable jacket. Also, be careful not to pierce the cord when you hammer the tacks. If you are running wires under the carpet, be sure not to route them under high-traffic areas where they may be damaged.
In addition to being unsightly, the clutter of wires and cables under the desk or behind your entertainment centre can be unsafe. So, it is best to do something about them right now before it’s too late.