Home Office Cable Management Hacks: VELCRO® Brand Ties & More

Hybrid and remote working have become the norm for many following on from the COVID-19 pandemic, leading to many people having set up a designated office space in their homes. If this rings true for you, then, like many, it’s likely that there is a particular inconvenience that you’re affected by: untidy cables.

Due to all the equipment necessary to run a home office, the presence of cables is unavoidable, however they can be managed in various ways to keep them more organised. We’ll be discussing our top cable management hacks for your home office and more in this guide, with special reference to VELCRO® Brand cable ties – the unsung heroes when it comes to cable management!

What’s Included in a Home Office Setup?

Before we delve into our organisation tips, let us first look at what’s actually included in the ideal home office setup. Of course, you’ll have the standard desk and chair, then likely some stationary and notebooks, potentially along with some file organisers to store any important work documents.

These are all the standard items you would expect to include in your basic home office setup, but where do all the cables suddenly come from? Well, you can expect to start getting tangled up in wires thanks to the following items:

• Computer/laptop
• Speakers
• Printer
• Shredder
• Desk lamp

When using a computer for your work at home, then you will need both the computer box itself and the monitor (or monitors if you require multiple screens for your job), which already requires three separate cables; one to plug the computer box in to a power supply, one to connect your monitor to a power supply and one to connect the monitor and computer box to one another.

Using a laptop, then, is the favourable option when it comes to there being less cables, however you will still need to plug its charger in at some point throughout the day. And, if you connect your laptop to any additional monitors, then cables will be required once more.

With remote working comes video meetings, which of course require a camera and sound. To get the best sound quality from your computer, it’s best to invest in a pair of speakers. As for cameras, some modern monitors do have inbuilt cameras into their screens, however others will require you to purchase a separate camera to sit on top of the monitor. And what does all of this extra equipment come with? That’s right, more wires!

One item that you may or may not need, but is certainly useful to own even if it isn’t a priority, is a printer. Printers are ideal for printing off important work documents at your convenience, as well as being great for personal use, also. Naturally these must be plugged in, and whilst some are wireless, others will require a separate cable to connect the printer to your computer or laptop.

Going hand in hand with the printer, you may also benefit from a paper shredder in your home office. If you work with any documents that contain sensitive information and these must be recycled or binned for whatever reason, then a shredder ensures that such information stays private once these documents have been discarded.

This one may often be overlooked, but a desk lamp is great to include in your home office setup. Having the option for concentrated lighting is much less harsh during those early mornings when it’s dark compared to having the main light on. With that said, it does mean yet another wire down the back of your desk.

Hiding Wires: Home Office Organisation Tips

As you can see, depending on your home office setup, you could be dealing with a nightmare amount of wires getting tangled down by your sockets. Not only can this be a pain to know which cable belongs to which appliances, but it can be incredibly unsightly more than anything.

Thankfully, there are lots of different ways you can go about managing these, as we’ve listed below.

Cable Boxes

One of the simplest ways to hide your wires from sight is by placing them in a cable box. These boxes have openings at either end to allow your wires to still access both the corresponding appliance and power source, whilst the box stores the excess wire to hide it from sight. These often come in plain designs and appear rather inconspicuous on your desk.

In our opinion, the only downside is that they don’t keep wires organised within the box, they are more there simply for aesthetic relief.

Cable Organisers

Cable organisers come in a range of types and designs, although most will usually attach to your desk in some way, shape or form. Some examples come in the form of a tray that holds and guides your wires, whilst others act more like clips to hold individual wires in place.

These are great for holding wires that aren’t always in use, such as charging cables, and for reducing how tangled your cables become, although they can’t always hold or organise excess wire.

Cable Ties

In comparison to cable organisers and boxes, cable ties are arguably the best item at organising excess wire. They can be used to gather excess wire of individual cables that would otherwise just lay on the floor, or they could hold multiple cables together to stop them from tangling and taking up so much space.

Whilst traditional cable ties are plastic, VELCRO® Brand cable ties are an excellent alternative that offer arguably more benefits.

The Benefits of VELCRO® Cable Management

Reusable

Arguably the main benefit of VELCRO® Brand cable ties is that they’re reusable. Unlike traditional plastic cable ties, which cannot be loosened once tightened and require you to use scissors to cut them off, VELCRO® Brand ones can be reused time and time again.

This also makes them much more sustainable, as you won’t require the use of a new cable tie each time you require a cable to be added or removed from your bundle of wires.

Easy to Use

As well as being reusable, VELCRO® Brand cable ties are also easy to use. As with any hook and loop, all you need to do is pull the two sections apart in order to undo these cable ties, then simply stick them back together again when you’re ready to wrap them back around your cables.

Affordable

Whilst plastic cable ties are known to be incredibly cheap, when you consider the reusability of VELCRO® Brand cable ties, they actually work out as incredibly affordable in comparison. They are still inexpensive to buy in the first place and the use you can get out of them makes for a worthwhile investment.

Effective

Hook and loop is incredibly effective (especially VELCRO® Brand), being a strong and durable solution for holding your cable ties in place. Furthermore, this type of cable tie won’t damage your cables by leaving any residue or kinks on them, instead they are much gentler on your wires.

VELCRO® Brand One Wrap Cable Ties and More

So, if you work from home and are looking for ways to improve the cable management in your home office, then VELCRO® Brand cable ties are the way to go.

As official VELCRO® premium distributors here at MPD Hook & Loop, we offer both their ONE-WRAP® cable ties and ONE-WRAP® tape, both of which are ideal for cable management.

Get in touch today to learn more about the products we sell and to discuss which products we’d recommend to best suit your needs.