It’s been a month since I first started moving my home office from a vertical standpoint to a horizontal one. It’s taken me a bit more time than I thought, but I made some serious progress yesterday. Above is where I was at first thing in the morning. My main complaint was that all my wires and components were sitting on or below my teacart at left.
I can’t stand how many power cables, Ethernet wires, and USB cords are needed for Internet and phone at home – sheesh!
My solution: Installing (almost) everything beneath the last shelf on the teacart. After the jump, a breakdown of what I did…
I decided to install a piece of wood (a leftover from Ikea’s 
I then secured my power strip, broadband router, VoIP router, and 
From there I started plugging in all the cables into their respective ports and wrapping up excess cords with 
I then installed the hook side from 
It looks a bit insane from below, but when righted and wheeled into its spot (now on the right side of my desk) I think it looks pretty good.
You?
wowowow! good job!!! :)
i bought the belkin concealed power strip. which i do love. however, i'm finding my problem with organizing the cables is that when i need to unplug ANYTHING, or, for that matter, plug IN anything, it is the most annoying process ever. it is SO not organized within the concealer! thankfully, it conceals well.
i am most proud of putting the wireless printer, cable modem, and netgear router all in the hall closet! it's really made me happy :)
view kdkaboom's profile
From the viewpoint of getting everything out of the way, it's great to attach things to the bottom or back of a desk or table, but if you have to tweak your connection or reset a device, it's a real pain to access them.
While I know it's not "pretty", I prefer to have devices where I can see what their lights are telling me rather than sticking them so far out of the way.
I made a custom stand to do this and you can't see the wires my way either.
http://tinyurl.com/55bh5d
However, I'm guessing this would be a pretty bad solution for minimalists.
view Orchid64's profile
kdkaboom,
do you mind sending me pics of your solution? Interested in seeing what you did. You can catch me at sonia (at) apartmenttherapy (dot) com.
Orchid64, what does your wiring situation look like? I like how your routers fits so nicely underneath your monitor stand, but I'm curious what the cable sitch looks like.
-s
view lil' soso's profile
Surely! I'd be delighted to share! I'll try and get some good photos taken today or over the weekend. Cheers!
view kdkaboom's profile
On Oprah a few days ago, Nate Berkus (sp?) had a solution to this...
He cut a hole in the side of a nice box (no, he didn't stick his dick in the box :P). Then he stuck all the ugly wires in in and put the lid on - voila, all gone!
view jackie_22's profile
Weeee! Dickinabox reference!
Jackie, that box trick - I've seen that around before on AT. The issue people had with it was all the heat building up inside from the power strip or something. I dunno, whatev. I just loved your SNL reference ;)
view kdkaboom's profile
lil' soso: The cables fall freely behind my desk (which has a metal grate back with quite tiny holes which can't be seen through) so they are out of sight.
The stand cost $4 (and zero skill) to make, btw.
view Orchid64's profile
this is brilliant! I never would have thought of that!!!
view piffdos's profile
Chaos averted!!! Very nice.
I can't help but think our grandkids are going to look at pictures/posts like this and laugh at how convoluted everything was wirewise "back in the old days". :-)
view LilyC's profile