At the end of my rope, er ... I mean cable...

Today I was looking everywhere for the adapter to plug my blood pressure monitor into the wall outlet. I was concerned its battery life was affecting my readings, and I knew there was an adapter around here somewhere. It wasn't where I thought it was, but then I remembered this plastic box we have that contains phone chargers, ear buds, all kinds of snaky cords and cables. I found the box, tore into it, and came up with a mess that looked like this:

I'm normally a patient, kind of serene person, but this kind of stuff gets on my last nerve. I had to go through it all to find the one item I wanted. I'm not even sure we still need all this stuff or still have any devices that use some of it. Bear in mind, I'd gone through it previously and taken out all the phone chargers that I thought someone else might use and gave them away. I needed a solution. Bear in mind, I'm not the original thinker who came up with the following idea, but I remembered my husband saw something online awhile back that inspired him to organize his desk drawer that was full of assorted cables and such that were similarly impossible to sort through when you wanted to find a USB cable or the charger for the Garmin.

Here's what you do:

Collect a bunch of these:

Everyone uses toilet paper, and there are actually some good uses for the empty tubes. This is one of them. You'll also need a Sharpie, ink pen, or some other writing instrument. I suppose if you wanted to get particularly fancy, you could make labels on the computer and thus include more descriptive text than I did.

Sort your cables, cords, and chargers into groups of like items. For the larger items, use one tube per item. For the smaller items that do the same job, you can put two or three in one tube. Mark the tubes in whatever manner helps you identify the contents. I recommend wrapping the cords and cables loosely so as not to damage the itty bitty copper wires or phoenix feathers or whatever other magic may be contained inside them. (If you're concerned about damage, then don't do this. I am not responsible for any problems you may have with anything. Fold or wrap your cords and cables at your own risk.)

The end result is shown below. I still may never use some of this stuff but at least I'll be able to find it if I do.