How do you fix cable chaos?

My cable situation has gotten out of hand and I don't know how to fix it?!

I recently cleaned up my home cinema, but it involves a lot fewer components. My computer setup has all these bits connected together:

• Two desktop PCs (one no longer connected)
• Two laptops (one mainly disconnected)
• PS3 + PS4
• Monitor
• Mike + Preamp
• Webcam (must be connected/disconnected often)
• 2 Mice, Keyboard, 5 PS controllers lying around
• 5 phones, 4 tablets (all disconnected usually, but need to be connected/powered)
• Line mixer, amplifier, CD player, speakers (I need my music!)
• Music keyboard, guitar effects processor, pedals
• 2 routers, phone, KVM switch
• Printer
• Likely some bits that I've forgotten and don't even need anymore

There's well over 100m in cabling, of all sorts, behind my desk. I keep looking at options to organize it but never found anything satisfactory. Most organizers seem to assume cables go a long distance before connecting devices, but mostly my devices are close together, and scattered everywhere. There is no regularity to my cable needs.

Has anybody managed to cleanup such a situation?

Comments

[Jen Chan]

Exact same situation right now but less gear than you. All my life I've avoided dealing with this. Last night I unplugged and replugged a whole bunch of cords. The condo I am bunking in that's my partner's is small and outlets are in odd spots. I am watching this now youtube.com/watch?v=Uc01oUqmxhE and this thespruce.com/cable-management-sec...

I don't have much money, so I'm going with bulldog clips and 3M stickies. Ordered some velcro cable ties online because theres even more loose cables and old obsolescent cords in a stack of plastic drawers we have.

I imagine if I went to engineering school that this would have been clearer to me a decade ago.

I'm interested in how it's going for you by the way.

[edA‑qa mort‑ora‑y]

I bought more clips and try to group cables. I've never found a "clean" solution. Get cables as short as possible, and use easy-to-access clips.

I've since gotten rid of one computer, so it's a bit less messy. Moving some pieces closer, where there's a higher cable rate, also made it cleaner.

[etcdigitalfr]

Got a punchdown tool (a good one) but I really prefer keystone patchpanels due to regular reorganization of the rack content. But I really try getting the cables in the right length ;)

tech-computer.fr/entreprise-cablag...

[edA‑qa mort‑ora‑y]

I've looked at such organizers, winders, bars, rails, mounts, etc. There tend to be two main problems with them:

• Cost: With somewhere between 50 and 100 cables this little gadgets add up fast.
• Insufficient: Again, replacing the cable soup with 50 to 100 little boxes, or even 20-30 boxes et. al, all with cables still coming out of them, doesn't seem like it'd really help that much. I'd never seen a picture which shows more than like 6-10 cables, all of the same type, to the same place.