123 - How to declutter and organise wires, chargers and cables

Summary

In this episode of Decluttering Untangled, Heather Tingle addresses the common issue of cluttered electrical wires, cables, and chargers in homes. She emphasises the emotional and psychological challenges associated with decluttering these items and provides a structured approach to tackle the problem. Heather outlines steps to gather, sort, and organise cables effectively, while also encouraging listeners to let go of items that no longer serve a purpose. The episode concludes with practical tips for maintaining an organised system and fostering a stress-free environment.

Chapters

00:00
Introduction to Decluttering Cables and Chargers

05:52
Sorting and Matching Cables

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Transcript

Heather Tingle (00:01.346)
Hello, untanglers, and welcome back to another episode of Decluttering Untangled with me, your host, Heather Tingle. So today I wanna talk about something really specific. I think it's gonna be really helpful for you because I want to talk to you about electrical wires, cables, and chargers. So that junk drawer stress that seems to live in every single home I walk into. And the junk drawer with cables that you don't know what they're for.

the bag of charges or wires that you've moved house with three times, and the box of tangled wires that you've got in the garage. That random charger that you don't know what it's for, but nobody dares throw it away because it might come in handy or might be really essential one day. Now, if this is for you, then please know that you are not alone, that this is very normal and it happens in so many different homes. You're not careless, you're human, and you're probably also...

running a house in 2026 where everything needs a charger and none of it ever looks the same. And I include my own home in that, especially because Apple keep changing the bloomin' ends of the chargers. So I find that chargers and wires and cables have got a few issues and there's real reasons why that they're a bit of a struggle because they are a kind of decision problem. They're quite complicated.

because they're actually quite a really big long-term project to declutter. It's rather than a quick fix. So this is not something that you can listen to today and then get started and it take 10 minutes unless you're already hyper-organized, in which case you're probably not listening to this podcast. And it's not something you can get an immediate solution to sort, but what I'd like to do today is give you like a blueprint or a plan of action to follow on how you can sort it properly and for good. And it takes as long as it takes to declutter in all honesty.

So cables, chargers and wires represent so many unfinished decisions. So we keep them just in case. We don't know what they belong to. We assume that future us will know in the future, this magical version of us is gonna understand exactly what it was for and know more information than what we know now. Future us does not have that information. If you don't have that information now, it's highly unlikely that future you is going to know that if you don't do something about it.

Heather Tingle (02:21.952)
That's really important to know that you've actually got to do something to have the answers. And for a neurodivergent brain, especially this is quite a perfect storm of issues. So executive dysfunction makes categorizing and sorting it feel really hard work and heavy. Fear of throwing something away and really important can keep us stuck with it. Not knowing where to take something to get rid of it can be difficult and tech feels.

especially my head anyway, I hope that I'm not alone in this. It feels a little bit more complicated and confusing than my capabilities, so we try and avoid it. So this is what I would like you to try and tackle it really with. So step one is not to sort it room by room. It makes it much more complicated that way.

Step one is actually to gather every single wire, charger, cable in your home and create an electricals box or two. I would say two really, you're have one for wires and chargers and that kind of cables and one for the main product. So like the old tech stuff. the camera, the microphone, the computer, the laptop, that kind of stuff. I want you to have those in two different boxes.

As you declutter your home, like your kitchen, your loft, your garage, you're gonna keep an eye out for any of those random wires or electrical items that you find that's kind of random, and then you're place it in those boxes. Now, it might be that you've got heavy duty wires in the garage for power tools, and you might have another smaller one for like computer wires in your home office, for example, or your living room if that's where most of your tech lives, like gaming stuff. So that is okay.

Think about the placement of these boxes as that's actually quite important. And this is something that you can absolutely start doing today is getting those boxes sorted. So going through the drawers, the baskets behind the sofa, looking in your loft, in your car, the random one in the kitchen, in the back of your car, boo. I try to think where all my wires are. So I have to do all over the place. And I want you to put them in one place.

Heather Tingle (04:48.876)
And then as you get closer to the end of your decluttering journey, everything is all together. So that's when you're need an hour or two to go through them and find a space to get them all out and go through them. So obviously until you're at this point, it's making life easier because you know where the random wires that you find can live. So they've got a temporary home.

And also when you need a wire or charger, you're nowhere to look for it. So although it might take three months, six months, a year to feel you at the point where you've probably emptied every old suitcase, gone through every doom bag or box, or you've gone in every little like nook and cranny in your home, it's gonna take time to get to that point. But at least in the meantime, you've got those boxes either, I don't know.

in your under stairs cupboard or in your living room, dining room or garage or whatever, you've got them there. So at least you know they've got a temporary home for now. So once you've got them all together, you're pretty much at the end of your decluttering journey. I'm sorry, this does take time. But you're get to the point of sorting them all out. like dining table's good. If you've got a big space on your floor, that's really useful. If you don't have that space somewhere like your bed,

or if it's a nice day, you can do it outside in the garden, but somewhere where you can visibly see everything and you can put them in like different piles for different sizes of type of thing. So it might be ones that are quite heavy duty, be it one side of the space, it might be you've got loads of USB cables and those kinds of things at another side and you can put them all together so you can see how many you've got of each one. So when you get them all together,

something quite interesting happens, psychology. It stops being lots of like tiny, annoying, irritating decisions and it starts to become a project. And it's a bit like really very boring game of matching pairs where you've got to match things up together. So it does become a little bit of a treasure hunt. So instead of like, my God, I've got wires everywhere. It kind of becomes a, right, which one do you belong to or what fits this socket and try and figure it out.

Heather Tingle (07:07.042)
So that's when you're gonna have the fun part and I'm obviously being sarcastic at this point of plugging things in and testing. So you're gonna need a plug socket near you because you're gonna have to check if some of them is faulty or not because it may be that you bought a new one because the old one didn't work but you never got rid of the old one just in case it did actually work. So you're gonna need to check if something is faulty or not. It might be that you're gonna have to get some batteries to charge something up.

before you can check if a wire works or not, or if an item works or not. So it's really important that this is a real kind of project and you've got everything that you need for this project. So you're get all your devices together, your old laptops, your old phones, your old Kindles, your old headphones, your old cameras if you still got them, those kind of things. And that's when you're start matching them together, find out what fits in each one. And it might be that a wire works for more than one thing and that's okay. So what works?

what charges something that you own, you're going to find duplicates and that's okay. You will find that you've got like three or four cables and I'm being very, very like that's the small number here that do the same job. And you're going to find at least one that belongs to something that you threw away years ago. And it's probably because you couldn't find the blooming charger for it.

But you're to find things and then you're to find these random things that you've got absolutely no idea what it is for. This is where Google Image Search can come really in handy and also getting a magnifying glass if you've got old eyes like me. So you can actually see the really worn writing on the top of the charger or a brand name or something like that to give you an idea of what it could possibly be for. But if you've got absolutely no idea what something is for and you've got all your technical items together and you can't find the other half to it,

ask yourself a really simple question. Do I own this item? Probably not. If the answer is no, then let it go because it's highly likely that if you keep it, then you probably can get the other, you can probably get it again if you need it anyway. So if you find the thing that it belonged to and you'd got rid of it, it's probably not the end of the world because you probably haven't used it in a long, long time. And if you did want to use it, you can probably buy another cable for it very, very easily and cheaply anyway.

Heather Tingle (09:19.694)
So the answer, if you do not know what that mystery cable or charger is for, it is okay to let it go. Or maybe put a limit on it for keeping it for a certain length of time. It may be that you've got lots of the same type of cable. Are you gonna put a limit on that? Maybe keeping three or five, but maybe not 27 of the same one. That can maybe come in handy. And labeling them.

Don't be afraid to put them in the bin if you need to get rid of them. It is okay unless it's got some kind of battery in there. Obviously it's got some kind of battery in it, you don't put it in your bin because it's a fire risk. So most councils will take small electricals at the tip or waste disposal sites or recycling centers I think as they're now called. There's also places like hardware superstores, the B &Qs of the world will also accept small electricals too.

You can also be useful if you've got a company like we have where I live, we're really lucky. We've got a company that takes old electricals and reuses them. So they take old laptops and computers and then if they get a spare cable, it can come in handy for them. So do find a good solution for you. And if that means letting it go properly, just in a tip, then that's okay.

Like that's all right, you don't have to find the right exit for it. So how to stop it happening again is, well you've already done the main thing and that's by having your boxers. So you've already got the homes, you just got to find the right place for it, whether it's in the garage or in a drawer somewhere. So for some families that I work with, it's having it in the playroom so that most of the kids' toys are electricals that's where most of the stuff is. It might be in the living room where most of the gaming stuff and TV stuff is and like.

stereo systems are or it might be in the garage because it's mostly power tools or it might be like under the stairs cupboard or under the kitchen kitchen cupboard like with DIY stuff. It's whatever's right for you and your family in your circumstance. But labelling is one of the most important things you can do because you'll think that you'll remember and you probably won't. So it's not over the top to do it. It's just looking after your future friend.

Heather Tingle (11:39.01)
So get some masking tape or if you don't have it, like washi tape, wrap a little flag, make a little flag around with it and then the charger and write in permanent marker what it belongs to. So for example, work laptop or Kindle or spare USB or whatever makes sense to you. Your future self is gonna love you for doing this. And if you get stressed about them tangling up, then.

do what I do and secure it. So you can bundle them into figure of eights and use things like elastic bands, but I get too stressed with elastic bands. So I use Velcro ties, even a bit of string, like do not make the presentation of it difficult for yourself. Use what you've got at the time. I've known people use, what's it called? Like pretty ribbon from like a craft kit or from gift wrap.

just to tie things together. That's okay, you can use it like that, that's fine. One of the things that I like to use with clients is empty toilet roll tubes. So wrapping them way around in a figure of eight and then putting it inside and then writing on the outside of the tube what it is, pop it in a box so it's easy to find. That's what best thing is for us. It doesn't need to be Pinterest pretty though. It just needs to be functional. needs to know, you just need to know where it is and what it is. And that's it really. So give them a home.

one basket, one clear box, a drawer with a divider, if you've not got that many and they're quite thin. And the rule is simple. If you buy a new device, its charger lives here, not in the nearest surface you were standing next to when you opened the box. And also, do not be afraid to get rid of those random little wires inside the box that you've got no idea what they are. Now, the amount of ones I find for like stereo systems and TVs that no one has got a clue what these different coloured

bobbily wires are, let them go. If you've not used it, it is okay to let them go. You definitely can get those again. So obviously don't sue me if you don't ever get them again, but in my experience, if you've not used them, you're not gonna use them in the future. So let them go. But remember it's.

Heather Tingle (13:46.958)
not about like minimalism or being perfect. It's just about reducing a bit of stress really. So every time you open a drawer and you see a tangle, your brain just stresses because it's unfinished business and you don't know what it is and you get confused. It's like, I quickly shut the drawer again. And that is quite a cumulative issue when they're everywhere, but when it's contained and labelled, your nervous system can relax a little bit, you know where things are and you've got that bit of trusting yourself a little bit more. So you get a bit of relaxation in that.

I am also gonna give you a Heather says it's okay moment. So you are allowed to keep spares. You are allowed to have a phone charger in every room in your home. If that's what helps you have a phone that doesn't die because the battery dies when you need it. You're allowed to do that. You are allowed to not know what every single cable does at least for a bit. You are allowed to recycle things even if you're 98 % sure or 100 % sure it's okay to let it go.

Ask yourself, can I get this item again? Give it a quick Google. You'll probably find that you can get it quite easy and cheaply. Most things have replacements that you can buy again these days. And it's highly unlikely you will actually ever need to. If it's a really, really rare cable and you know it's going to really hard to get again, despite not using it, it is okay to keep it. Remember that decluttering isn't just about what goes, it's about loving what you've got and knowing where it is and having the space for it and no stress because of it. That's what it's about.

Not about being perfect, just about it being a bit easier for you. So if you need like a little tiny action to take after listening to this, I'm gonna say go get a box, ideally a clear container, big heavy plastic one if you get it, if you got loads, and market charges, wires and cables and let everyone know in your home that's what it is and this is where it lives and this is what you're going to use it for. And don't forget to let me know how you get on.

So if you message me, by the way, by the podcast, I love getting your messages and they come through direct to me and they make me smile and they make me happy. But what happens with that is it is kind of anonymous. They don't give me your details. So I cannot reply to you, I'm afraid. But do feel free to reach out, pop a message into my Facebook group and let me know how it goes.

Heather Tingle (16:03.35)
And if you can do me a massive favor, I would love it if you could give us a review. When we first started, we got loads of reviews to start off with, and it slowed down a bit and it makes me a bit sad. So if you can give me a bit of a review, positive one would be really great, then I would love your loads. And it also means that more people get to see what we do here and it helps get them untangled. Okay, so I hope that has given you something to think about. So until next time.

Be kind to yourself, remember you're not alone and keep untangling.