It doesn’t have to be halloween for me to find big scary webs hanging around clients’ homes. It happens year round, and those webs are made of many, many tangled electronic cords.

It’s understandable, really, for several reasons– one being that we own such a great many electronic devices, all of which come with their own bevy of cords. The devices may come and go, but the cords remain; they get added to our ever-growing collection of unidentifiable wire-things. Why? Because. We may still need them someday. Better to keep the cord than to find yourself unable to plug in that personal DVD player from the early part of the new millenium. Good heavens!

So, then, to tackle the cord issue. This is going to be a two step (post) approach. Today we’ll cover cord identification.

Let’s say, just as a for instance, that you have a secret stash of cords lying around somewhere. Some are black, some are white, and they all have different tip thing-ers. Your first order of business is to identify the purpose of each cord. Lucky for you, I’ve made a dummy-proof guide to help you through the cord-sort.

When you have your cords identified you can better establish whether or not you actually have a need for them. Do you still own an electronic component that requires an RCA connector? If not, please, let them go, sir or madame. Those cords that can be conclusively paired to a device you still own and operate should be labeled.

You may also want to label cords that are currently in use; when you’re crawling underneath your desk in the dark-ish trying to unplug just the lamp, it will help monumentally if you can tell the difference between them.

You can easily label cords with simple stickers or paper tags, or even bread bag closures– you know what I mean.

You can use a bit of washi tape, which is like, uber trendy right now.

Or you can opt to purchase cord identifiers. These Dotz Cord Identifiers couldn’t be any cuter:

That’s all for cord identification– tomorrow we’ll delve into the realm of cord containment. Stay tuned!