Straightening out your home, one wire at a time

They’re dirty and unsightly and we do our best to pretend they’re not there. They lurk in corners, peek out behind our couches and gather dust bunnies and spider webs to annoy us. We’re talking about those nasty tangles of twisted cords and wires that clutter up our homes.

Lamps, stereos, clock radios and computers are essential to every day life, but their hard-to-tame cords can be visually distracting. Want to keep your wires from going haywire? Try some of these tips to keep those unruly cables under control:

•For a free, quick solution, you can pick up the slack on loose cords by neatly looping the excess together and tying it in a bundle with bread ties or the plastic ties for garbage bags. For a little cash, you can buy strips of Velcro from a hardware or fabric store which can be wrapped around a fat bundle of wires or used to attach the wires to the leg of a chair or table.

• Reduce the number of wires on view by eliminating any of the appliances or gadgets you don’t use regularly. How often do you actually use your pencil sharpener, cake mixer or record player? If you seldom use it, store it away, or keep it unplugged and hide the cord behind it.

•Can you use an outlet which is not in plain sight? By adding an extension cord to a lamp or your stereo you might be able to plug in your device in an outlet that is less prominent. This may allow you to re-route the accompanying wires behind a couch or under the curtains.

•If your home does not have a slab foundation, and you have a furniture arrangement you know you’ll keep for eons, and you have the money to spend on the services of an electrician, why not install outlets in the middle of a room on the floor? This keeps wires from crawling across open space, prevents safety hazards and allows you to place lamps in furniture arrangements which “float” in the middle of a room.

•Wouldn’t you rather see a tidy snake-like tube behind your TV than five dusty wires? Try a tubular cord control kit offered by electronics and hardware stores. It’s a flexible, corrugated, hose-like gizmo into which you can squeeze up to 20 wires and cut off at the length you need to cover the cords.

•Don’t laugh, but one of my frugal friends made her own cord management system by cutting up the cardboard from paper towel and toilet paper rolls.

•Sometimes you’re stuck with an appliance with a really long cord, inches away from an outlet, leaving you with yards of loose wiring. Both the Improvements catalog and Lilian Vernon catalog sell a cable roller that lets you wrap up to 16 feet of cord or cable into a pill-shaped, black plastic shell.

•Many older homes have outlets spaced miles apart, forcing you to run wires long distances around the perimeter of the room. You can purchase U-shaped nails at the hardware store and carefully nail them over the cords to the baseboards or flooring (Of course you’d do this with the appliance unplugged, and avoid puncturing the cord to avoid a nasty shock!).

•Stores that sell organizing supplies offer several different types of wire clips and ties, all for usually under a few dollars per set, which grab the wire(s) and then can be either screwed in or taped to the wall or floor.

For those who like a tidier solution, try cord covers, available at many hardware stores. These are long, rigid, plastic channels with an adhesive backing which attaches to most flat surfaces.

The channels allow you to run wires on top of baseboards, under crown molding and up walls to fixtures. A variety of attachments allow you to go around corners and connect sections together.