Best Results Organizing

Everybody complains about cable storage. You can’t swing a lightning cable without hitting a blog post or video or Pinterest page on keeping cables untangled, separated, and safe, whether via retail products or DIY methods. For example:

• Paper Doll’s Cable Conundrums & the MOS: Magnetic Organization System
• Organizing the Cords Under Your Desk! by Helena Alkhas
• Cords and Cables and Labels and Controlling the Cables: 3 Novel Solutions by Jeri Dansky
• 10 Ways To Get Cables Under Control by Gina Trapani
• Organize, Store and Buy Computer Cables Wisely by David Caolo for Unclutterer
• How To Tame Cable Cord Chaos (video) by Lori Marrero
• Untangle Your Life: Living Organized With Cables and Cords by Apartment Therapy
• 61 Clever Cord Organizers

However, most of the standard stabs at keeping cables and cords organized seem to focus on cables that stay put in your home or office. Other than Paper Doll-recommended Grid-It!, a past NAPO EXPO fan favorite, we rarely see much about how to corral cables in transit so they don’t get tangled in our book bags, purses and when we’re on the go. Happily, the NAPO 2015 Annual Conference and Organizing EXPO had an exciting new entry in the world of cable organization.

NEET Cable Keeper

(©2015 Julie Bestry. Peter Chin, founder of NEET Products.)

Winner of the 2015 Organizers’ Choice Award, the NEET Cable Keeper is the equivalent of a tea cozy for your cables, if your tea cozy were crossed with a hoodie crossed with a corset. Each long, colorful strip of cloth material — NEET calls it a “shell” — isolates a single cord or cable from any other, and then includes these essential features:

Zipper — Here’s where the hoodie action comes in. There’s no threading your cable or cord through a complicated maze of plastic molding. (If you’ve ever tried to replace a drawstring in a pair of sweatpants, you know how frustrating that can be. Yes, you can attach a safety pin to guide the string, inch by inch, but ARGGGGGHHH, just recalling that makes Paper Doll grumpy.) Merely lay the cord or cable down across the NEET Cable Keeper and zip it up!

The bottom of the shell is flared, which allows you to encase larger USB ends, and it has ample space for multiple cables to be enclosed.

Structured Wire — Sewn into the length of the cloth strip is a bendable wire, much like the stays in a (modern) corset, that provide support stiffness and support. The structured wire services two purposes:

• It protects your cables and cords from damage. There’s no chance you’ll repeatedly fold your cord so tightly that the plastic coating will wear away, or accidentally crush it in a slammed filing cabinet drawer, damaging the delicate internal wires.
• It provides support for the whole cable or cord, making it suitable for wrapping neatly around your wrist as a bracelet, turning it into a loose necklace, or otherwise, bendy, gooseneck-lamp-style, making it beautiful as well as useful. NEET’s website even shows how to bend it into a stand for a smartphone.

Colorful Wardrobe — The NEET Cable Keeper comes in a variety of colors, so you can tell at a glance from across the room whether the cable you’re spotting is your Kindle charger or your Apple Lightning cord. The NEET Cable Keepers come in black, blue, gold, green, light blue, pink, red, purple, silver, white and yellow.

After you zip your cable cozily into the NEET Cable Keeper, like a toddler into a snow-suit, you’re set. It becomes part of the cable itself, so you have no additional pieces to carry or potentially lose; there’s no reason to take it off, unless you’re one of those people who likes to change the colors of your accessories on a daily basis. (Really, stop that.)

Take a peek:

You can get the Keeper two ways, both designed for mobile device cables measuring 3 feet (or about 100cm) or longer and 1/4″ in diameter. If your cable is longer than 3 feet, the width of the Keeper will accommodate you gently folding it before zipping it up.

• NEET Cable Keeper M, with just the Keeper, is $12.
• NEET Cable Keeper M with either a Micro USB cable or an Apple Lightning cable is $18.

It’s available directly from the NEET, and via Amazon, The Grommet and a few other retailers.

Although they are not yet available for purchase, NEET is developing a line of cable organizers for ear buds, laptops, home entertainment, and professional use such as for DJ’s and audio/visual work.

If you own a business and think it would be cool to brand these NEET Cable Keepers for your own customers, NEET founder Peter Chin says, “The NEET Cable Keeper is customizable! We can customize NEET for you to promote your company, event, and brand. Great for corporate giveaways, employee retention programs and brand awareness. Send us a message and we will gladly connect you to our authorized customization partners.”

Zip, wind and organize. Neat (I mean, NEET), eh?