Don't let anyone take away your big box of cables

Longer cables can also work but it kind of takes more space to get it done. Like, a 30-meter extension cord or similar is completely do-able, but it's useful to be able to walk around while it is happening. If the cable is both very long and very heavy, then it's a great workout for all kinds of muscle groups that may have been forgotten about. :)

But again, it's quick for the lengths we usually use in PC and home AV spaces. Or at least becomes quick with enough repetition: My hands seem to know how to do it on their own without me really looking or even thinking about it, and that frees my other resources up enough that I can visually plan my next (unrelated) move while the first is still in motion.

Multiple cables of about the same length can be wrapped together like this. A stereo pair of RCA interconnects, or the same 3 cables that always get used with a laptop, can stay grouped together and never become separated in storage.

It also works on laptop cables with a power brick in the middle.

And it's nice to the cables. Inherently avoiding axial twists is key here and the process also tends to help remove minor twists that showed up while the cable was in-use. It does produce periodic bends, and those bends always happen at the same places, and that repeated deformation does promote stress fractures at very predictable places.

But cables generally survive thousands of iterations of this over the span of decades, and decades is good enough. :)

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Stage hands, meanwhile: There's reasons they hate the double-double technique, above. Their cables can be very long, there can be literal tons of them, and speed is a very important factor.

So they use a very specific coiling technique called over-under that seems impossible to describe with written language alone. It does put axial twist into the cable but those twists alternate and average to 0 instead of accumulating or multiplying (like elbow-wrapping can do[1]).

Over-under always requires the coil and cable ends to be tied up together before storage. That's often accomplished with an appropriate length of stout string or even rope that is permanently tied to one end (nothing to lose), but velcro can work too.

It's a solid technique. When done right, it allows fast deployment: Untie it, hang onto one end, and the rest can be literally thrown across a stage or whatever. Since the twist averages to 0, it tends to unwind neatly as it flies and lay flat when it lands.

And, of course: It stows well. Cables wrapped over-under can be tossed into a bag or a trunk or hung on hooks or whatever; they don't tangle.

It's probably overkill for the big box of mostly-short cables at home, but it's also worth understanding for the longer stuff we also use.

[1]: Elbow-wrapping and other very common methods that aren't unwrapped exactly oppositely of how they were wrapped up to begin with, or provide some other mechanism to manage twist: Those are great ways to put permanent axial twists into a cable. It is the entire reason why the long extension cords hanging in so many home garages and work environments alike (and especially on commercial vacuum cleaners[2]) wind up looking like coil springs or curly pasta even after being stretched out flat-ish in an open space. They didn't start off that way; they were forced to be that way through handling. Friends don't let friends elbow-wrap cables.

[2]: And that's also why residential vacuum cleaners usually have a large number of ridges running down the length of their power cords.

The usual storage method has the user winding the cable around hooks on the side of the machine, and the usual deployment method involves rotating one of those hooks and liberating the entire coil of cable at once. This tends to promote axial twist.

But! The ridges enhance rotational friction. So as the ridged cable slides through the user's hand as they wind it back up onto the side of the machine after use, the ridges help those twists to be pushed down the line to the far end where the plug is. And since that end is loose at that time, it's free to rotate and alleviate twist. This happens automatically as the user winds up the cable and is a pretty good design trick. :) (I have no idea why commercial machines use smooth cable.)

1: use transparent boxes like an 11l IKEA Samla so you can easily see what you have.

2: fold each cable in half or a few times more and apply the granny knot[1], this will prevent your cables becoming an entangles mess. There are superior(tm) ways to fold cables, but doing the granny knot for household cables seems the way to go. Doing festivals with retro gaming computers I’ve done this thousands of times and it’s fast, saves space, gives quick and reliable access and prevents damage by pulling on cables from clutter etc

3: use multiple boxes for different categories: audio, game computers, standard power cables, pc cables (sata, usb), power bricks and so on to have some sort of a system, any system will work

4: don’t keep an inventory list: let the anarchy that is you, your memory and family, add and take away cables ad hoc. You will forget what is in the box and that is fine.

5: don’t forget the box exists and look in the box :)

[1]: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-g7cauAe7Ec

then i sorted my cables and printed out a normal piece of paper, with the text like "networking", or "PC cables" or whatever and placed that in the side of the boxes

then i can stack them in the basement and easily know which box i need, when i need a cable

its been super handy.

ive used the same trick, for same boxes, for our other storage boxes too. Wifes hobby items, christmas decorations, old consoles, or whatever

makes it super organized. (you need transparent boxes if you wanna just throw in a label print on the inside. i can place one on top of the items and i can see it from above, or either side of the box)

In my defense, over the years, I upgraded the box for one of this big semitransparent IKEA boxes, lid included.