Tips and Tricks for Organising Your Electrical Wires

Electrical wiring can be messy, it can clutter your home or workplace and make it difficult to access any of the appliances, cords, and technology you want to use. Beyond this, there are serious implications in terms of electrical safety. Tangled wires are more likely to be damaged and these have a larger chance of causing a fire or electrocution, this means that you could be putting everyone in your home or workplace at risk. However, there are various techniques and strategies to make sure you maintain your wiring for as long as possible, and doing this can even save you some money in terms of buying new, expensive cables.

Here is our advice on making sure that you keep your wiring as up to date, safe, and secure as possible.

Inspect your wires

Firstly, have a look at the wires that you have in your workplace or home. Have a look for signs of wear and tear, that means the protective layering on wires rubbing away, it also means looking for knots or twists and straightening them out. Make sure that you don’t have any wires that are overlapping, and consider whether you can remove the right wires in the worst-case scenario – if there was a fire.

When you are checking the conditions, you can other senses as well. Smell – use your nose and smell for any scent of burning. Listen – if you can hear any electrical noises, you need to replace wires. These can be clicking sounds, scraping, or any noises coming from wires or plugs.

Try using DIY to make some cable management devices

Before you think about purchasing any kit or device to sort or straighten your wiring, remember that there are plenty of online ‘do it yourself’ tutorials to help you make your own cable management tools. The kits for managing office wiring, or even personal technology and appliances, is very useful – though it does often cost a lot of money to buy one of these kits. There are hundreds of available blog posts detailing how to reuse common household items for this purpose; items such as wooden pegs and binder/foldback clips can all be used. These DIY tools can then be used to hold wires onto your desk, straighten them out, and make sure they aren’t tangled and are all distinguishable.

Label your wires

Labelling your wires may seem like a strange idea, but once you try doing it you will realise how helpful it can be for modern life. You can simply and easily use some non-shinny tape, any kind of tape will do, and write on what the different cords are – laptop charger, fridge, wireless router, etc. This will come to make a big difference, not only in the unfortunate possible scenario of a fire or blow out, but also when you need to grab a cord to unplug it and go. This also has the added benefit of personalising any charging cables or equipment you have, meaning that using them in public is easy as you will always be able to identify your own things. (we know this suggestion does not sound very exciting – but consider it like folding up your socks, it’s actually a great idea!)

Try storing unused cables securely and separately

When you are not using a cable, charger, or electrical wire it can be very easy to throw it behind a side, under a computer, or in a draw and forget about it. This will damage the wiring over time and when you need to use it, the cord may not work or may be dangerous to operate properly. Try storing all your cables in any cylinders that can fix inside a secure box, this will keep them separate whilst making sure they won’t be damaged by water or another spilt substance. If you are looking for an easy suggestion, toilet rolls once used can be paired with a Tupperware box to create a great storage environment.

Make sure you do not ‘daisy chain’ or ‘overloading a system’

These are two slightly technical terms, but they should be avoided! Daisy chaining is when you are attaching one device to another device over a large system, a common example is going through various multiple adaptors and then charging a laptop, phone, and Kindle from the end adaptor. You should always aim for the lowest number of electrical products plugged into each other and try and ensure that you are using as many of the power sockets as possible (rather than using one with adapters attached). Overloading a system is what happens when you plug too much into one socket. A standard UK socket is 230 Volts, whilst this is enough to power your technology or appliances you shouldn’t have more than one adapter plugged into the wall at one time – you are always better off safe than sorry, and speaking to a Thanet electrician about your sockets is easier than forking out money for them to be repaired!

Look at purchasing a cable management kit

If you have a lot of expensive equipment, or you want to invest to make sure that pricy cables are maintained for as long as possible, then you need to make sure that you have all your appliances and equipment well managed with professional equipment. You can buy cable management kits online, that comes complete with storage boxes, cable clips, cable holders, cable sleeves etc. These will be very useful and though they make be more expensive than making it yourself, it may also save you some time.

These are our suggestions to ensure you have a well organised and set up of cables and electrical wires. As stated in the begging of the blog post, doing this can help save you money in terms of buying new cables, as well as helping in the very unfortunate event of a fire or electrical blow out. If you have any questions about anything in this article or about electrical design in general, speak to us here at East Kent Electrical about our services and you can speak to a qualified electrician to help give you peace of mind.