Monday, April 02, 2007

New-mown grass and tangle-free cord storage


Long grass.

Short grass!

In the front yard, too!

Do your cords look like this? Here's a tutorial on tangle-free storage I learned from a cable professional.

Find the middle of the cord. You can mark it with a Sharpie or tape for future reference.

Tie the cord in a very loose knot.

Put the looped end over your left wrist.

With your right hand (this is tricky to show when one's right hand is already holding the camera) pick up a length of doubled trailing cord and feed it to your left hand, which then pulls it through the wrist loop. Let the wrist loop fall off your hand, and the new loop goes over your wrist.

Like so ... pull through, and let wrist loop fall.

Here's an attempt I made to photograph it with the camera on my knee, using the timer. The new double loop is over the left wrist. The right hand is grasping the loose cord to feed it to the left.

Keep looping the cord through this way until you get to the end. Pull one end of the cord through, then plug it into itself.

Here's what you get: a daisy chain that is impossible to get tangled, no matter how you store it.
Once you get the hang of it, it becomes a smooth series of motions and you can do it really fast! You can hang the chain up or throw it in a heap. When you want to use it, unplug the cord from itself and just pull ... the whole thing will simply unravel.

3 comments:

  1. Your yard looks lovely. Can't wait until I get to mow mine.

    Nice tutorial on the power cords. I am having a little trouble picturing the manly-man cable prof tying daisy chains, but... Guess no one said the cable professional was a guy, did they? At any rate, I tried it, and it works great!

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  2. Damn cords, indeed. "Daisy chain" is my term. Cable guys probably call it ... I dunno, handcuffs? Oh, probably just chain. "Chain up those cables, bud."

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