How To Hide Your Cords on the Cheap & Pretty

Most of us struggle with the design conundrum of how to disguise or hide messy cords, particularly if you want to use a leggy piece of furniture as a desktop or electronics docking spot. One clever, affordable idea (as in $4 affordable!) comes from Michelle, whose dreamy home we’ll be featuring in a future Apartment Therapy House Tour.

Michelle’s creative solution not only hides the bulk of her cords (she still had to leave the router and modem exposed) but adds a welcome design element, a lovely burst of green which complements the red and oranges so beautifully.

Michelle explains it best:

In 1956, Eero Saarinen designed his Pedestal table and chair collection to “clear up the slum of legs” found in most US homes. Saarinen was particularly vexed by “the underside of typical chairs and tables [that] makes a confusing, unrestful world.” Flash forward almost 55 years, and the same might be said of the tangle and slum of wires rampant in today’s homes, part and parcel of even the (mostly) wireless world of the 2010s. I don’t claim my solution is as timeless and elegant as Saarinen’s was, but it’s cheap, easy and will do in a pinch.

FIRST (and foremost):Don’t burn your house down. Any transformers, routers, external hard drives — basically, anything that gets warm to the touch or uses a fan — should not be covered up. I found that my power strip did not give off any heat, and was a good candidate for this project.

SECOND:Purchase one or more decorative boxes. I found mine, made of thick cardboard, at my local Goodwill: $3.99 for a set of four. For this project, the bigger the box, the better, as I wanted the power strip to have plenty of room inside the box, and more air circulation is better.

THIRD:The rest of the project was simple. I used a box cutter to cut the bottom out of the largest box. I paid special attention to cutting notches so that the cords would have room to extend outward, while leaving the box able to sit flush to the floor. If you are more patient than I am, you can neaten the edges of the box with scissors.

FOURTHLastly, set the box over the power strip, and arrange the cords so they sit snugly in the notches. Enjoy your less confusing, more restful space!

Thanks Michelle!

Images:Savo Wise