Repurpose shipping foam as a cable manager

Today like clockwork my notebooks power cord fell into that void between my desk and the dresser the moment I unplugged it. Swearing like a sea-captain and scraping my arm whilst surely looking like a crazy person performing contortions to get that darned cable back I thought to myself: There must be a better way. After looking around the house for something slightly more elegant than duct tape to keep cables in place, I came across some shipping foam in the trash can.


[step 1] Using a carpet knife I cut the foam into a thick rectangular piece that easily fit under the lip at the back of my desk.

shipping foam

[step 2] Then I made several cuts about half way into the foam (to hold the cables) and glued it directly to the back of my desk using a hot glue gun (the desk is cheap and the glue comes off easily).

handy dandy cable manager

[step 3] Next I wedged all my various cables into the slots on the foam and…Voila! Now when I disconnect cables they stay stuck in the foam instead of slipping and falling off my desk, yay!


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2 responses to “Repurpose shipping foam as a cable manager”

  1. Clay Fortin Avatar
    Clay Fortin

    Cool…this works pretty well! I like the paperclip cable holder method cuz it looks better, but some of my cables are too thin for those. The foam holds my audio and charger cables.

  2. leeleblanc Avatar

    Quite a cool idea — I’ve been looking for a “soft” hack like this for awhile. Thanks for posting. Will be saving our shipping foam now (for myself, the servers [yup, going to use to sort the jungle of cables we have], and all the PCs we have to work on.
    ~Lee

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