With everything going the way of technology, we all have cords everywhere.  There are tangles of cables under and behind our desks.  There are trailing cords where we’ve put devices (like laptops) in temporary locations.  We trip over them, or they tangle in each other and we mistakenly unplug the wrong thing because we can’t tell what’s what…

In short, cables can be a major organizing challenge!

Enter CableOrganizer.com.  These guys carry a variety of solutions for organizing our modern technological messes.  They sent me a couple things to try out: animal clips like you see above, and the Cable-Safe cable manager.

These little animal guys are cute and rather fun.  They stick on wherever you need them with adhesive foam dots.  Then the animals’ mouths can “chomp” your cables.  I find these especially useful for cords that are plugged and unplugged regularly, or that are in their location temporarily.  For instance, my laptop is not permanently “wired into” my desk area.  But I still want to not trip over the cord when the computer is on the desk.  Tugboat the Rhino here can help guide the cord into an unobtrusive location, while still leaving it easy to move later.

There are 30 different designs (that is, 30 different animals) to choose from, and at only 55 cents apiece, you can afford to get each of the kids his favorite.

The animals can “bite” other things, too, like USB drives or pencils.

The Cable-Safe is one of the best-designed cable organizers I’ve ever seen for taming the mess under the desk.  I’m actually in the midst of rearranging my whole office/library setup, and haven’t decided what equipment will and won’t stay there, so I haven’t installed the actual cables here yet.  But you can see here where I put the Cable-Safe in place.

Unfortunately, flash is rather essential underneath a desk; hopefully you can see this okay.  This sucker is easy to use and extremely versatile.  I was quite impressed with the attention to detail in the design.  If you have a normal office desk, installation will be a snap – almost literally.  See that flat part where it butts up against the underside of my desk?  Well, there’s a clamp there.  If your desk has a surface less than about…3-4 inches thick, all you have to do is slide that clamp over the edge and flip a little doohickey (the technical term 😉 ) to lock it into place.

Unfortunately for me, the top foot or more of my desk is solid all the way around.  (Well, except for where my legs go, but that’s obviously not a good place to install something.)  Fortunately for me, the product’s creators took that into consideration, too, and there are screw holes and screws included for mounting.  (I only have it screwed in through two holes.  There are actually four, but my desk’s design is a little weird and that strip the cable manager is attached to was just a little too narrow for the second set of holes, which are spaced slightly farther apart.  I mounted it sideways because I think that being pressed against the side of the desk will provide the additional support it needs.)

So that’s the first step out of the way: attaching the Cable-Safe to the desk.

(If you were able to use the clamp, there’s even nifty little hook at the top for hanging onto a cord while you hook something up or unhook it.  You know – the cord you usually drop into the depths of the dark corner as you try to reach the top and bottom of the desk simultaneously.)

Then you can use all these parts and pieces for organizing whatever cables you have to organize.  The three “arms” pop into place.  You can move them around – farther to the left or right, and at the upper or lower level.  Use the hook-like parts at the bottoms for hanging cables, or use the flat top portions as shelves for modems/routers.

There are even mini “bungee cords” for holding things in place.  See all these different options?

Foam tape, several different types of cable clips/wraps, bungee cords…

And the very best part: labels!

Maybe it sounds silly to say that the labels are the best part, but these are so well thought-out!  (And fun, too.  Look at all that color!)  There are 12 different colors/prints included here, for 12 different cables.  And each strip consists of three different parts.  First, there are three labels for wrapping around the cable itself.  These are designed so you can write what the cable is, then wrap it around the cord like a tab.  One for each end and one to go somewhere in the middle.  Honestly, that would be handy enough, but there are still two features left.

Little dots color-coordinated to each label set can be used to label the ports on the back of the computer!  (Why did I never think of that?)  Of course, the ports are technically labeled already, but they’re usually labeled by simply “embossing” a little icon on the back of the case.  I don’t know about you, but I can never see these icons in the dark – and it is always dark behind the computer.  So I always end up having to unplug everything so the case will reach to pull it out far enough into the light that I can see.  Brighter/more distinctive labels are so much better an idea!

And finally, there’s a column for keeping track of all of the cords in one spot.  A master list.

I am very impressed with this item.

What other products at CableOrganizer.com intrigue you?