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A secret I've found is use hair ties instead of rubber bands with cables, they survive long stints in the garage much better
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I double the cables over until they're short enough, and then tie them into a loose half knot.

No fasteners to wish for, or to fail.

Both ends of every cable are always next to each other for identification at a glance.

Different cables cannot tangle with each other in a box.

There are no axial twists imparted into the cable.

(Stage hands hate this technique, but this isn't stagecraft.)

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another benefit of the hair tie method is when you go to use the cable, you can take as much length as you need from either end, then bunch/coil 'n wrap the rest with the hair tie. You have given me a lot to think about though, I'm always looking for ways to improve my cable storage techniques
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It works best with short-ish cables; several meters or less is nice and quick and is simple to keep neat.

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.)

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I use cable velcro ties. A big roll of them is cheap.
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I have a roll of velcro for this. Massive roll, and I cut off small 7-8cm pieces.
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I use twine for the same reason. Dirt cheap. Lasts forever. Doesn't leave residue on your cables. The downside is I end up cutting the twine when I need to use the cable but a couple inches of twine in insignificant.
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I bought a small garden twist tie roll years ago. I don't have a garden but I have boxes of cables. Probably won't run out for another 10 years.
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I’ve cut up a broken USB cable and use the wires to tie up... other wires usually, for cables I have velcro, but I think it could work there as well.
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I routinely steal my wife's hairbands to tie various cables in my cable stash. You can never have enough USB cables of various types. But as Murphy dictates, the USB cable that I need now is one that I don't have in my stash.
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I started with the wife's stash, then bough a few thousand in bulk so i would never have to worry about it again
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you'll die violently if she find out you are behind the dissapearance of her hairbands. (At least that would happen to me)
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Used bicycle tube cut into rings make the best elastic bands, they don't degrade
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Garden stores/sections sell circles of green Velcro you can cut; I figure of it's good enough for UV then it'll work in a box.

As a bonus, you don't need to raid her hairbands.

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Ooooooo...... I hadn't thought of this. Thank you!
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Bike shops have yards of that stuff in the late winter/early spring. At least Trek shops do, dunno about others. Trek uses it to tie stuff onto the frame in the box to keep it all from rattling around.
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Bread ties are good too. Sometimes they're too short, but you can twist a few together
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There are similar long coated-wire ties used for gardening.

Zip-ties, velcro, and twine (all suggested previously) also work well.

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Ha! I use CD spindles for… wait for it… CDs! Just opened the second drawer of my desk and counted four spindles of blank CDs and DVDs that I haven't used in years.

(I also hoard blank CD/DVD jewel cases. Who says technology ruins lives?)

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For those CD-Rs that you have used, make sure you make a backup soon-ish – they degrade over time!
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I like to use the round Danish butter cookie tins for cable storage.
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Glad to see I am not the only one keeping our grandma's traditions alive.
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Thank you for mentioning cd spindles. Good times.
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