Better Living Using Zip Ties – Organizing Cables and Beyond

Say one thing for Chadrock Ninefingers, say he obsesses over organizing things.

Since I was but a wee lad, I’ve had an obsession with optimizing and organizing. Whether it’s finding the best way to fold my t-shirts, or tricks to keep myself on track while preparing for a trip, I obsess over every detail – much to the dismay of my girlfriend. But this obsession often comes in handy, and today I’m going to share a few examples of how you can use a simple household restraint… er, item, to organize your cables, kitchen sink, and beyond.

Zip Ties, Good For More than Just BDSM

Perhaps you’re wondering why I have a giant bag of extra strong zip ties, and to that I say: don’t… even… worry about it. No, actually I was putting together a bunch of weighted sandbags last year, and used them to keep the bags closed. It’s for my health, honestly!

So I was left with a big swack of them, and one evening after drinking too much, I had a brilliant idea… I was going to use them to organize the cables under my desk.

You see, I was getting tired of having my headphone cable drag on the floor, and since I was under there, well… figured I may as well organize all the other cables too. As you can see, everything is lifted right off the ground, which makes it extremely easy to get under and vacuum. No more sucking your cables into the vacuum.

See the little Ikea tool fastened to the underside of the table? Yeah, much better than the ziplock bag I had taped under there before to hold the key and instruction manual.

Right then, so next came the sink…

We use a toilet scrubber to clean dishes (don’t laugh, it works very well!), and I was getting tired of it constantly pooling water all over the counter, or sliding back into the sink itself. So I took a zip tie, made a loop, and well, you can see the result for yourself. Hangs nicely out of the way, and acts as the perfect scrubbing holster – ready to clean away that extra pie, or should I say… Raspberry Pi!

A while ago I wrote about creating an awesome, inexpensive HTPC using a Raspberry Pi and a few other odds and ends. That’s been fantastic, however… since the RPi is so tiny, it was sort of flopping all over the place behind my TV, so I decided to restrain it like so:

Here I’m using two types of zip ties to great effect. Again, a simple little holster to keep this thing out of the way, with the added bonus of better air circulation around the unit.

And here’s a close up. It’s really not very complicated at all.

Simple Solutions Using Creative Thinking

At this point you might be saying to yourself, but Chad, there are plenty of store bought solutions for these kind of problems! and you’re right, there are… things to organize cables, RPi cases with better air circulation, and special dish racks that hold all the dish crap. That’s not really the point, though.

No, for me it’s about thinking creatively to do things for myself on the cheap. Sure I could just go buy these things, but doing so would rob myself of some creative thinking, and of course, a bit of money too. So use your brain, make a list of the things around your house that could go a bit more smoothly, and see if you can come up with your own creative solution using either things you’ve already got laying around the house, or that you can pick up on the cheap. It’s a ton of fun, and you’ll save some money to boot.