One of the biggest problems of being a gadget freak and audiophile is that every gadget seems to come with an endless supply of wires and cables. OH, THE WIRES. How do I hate thee? Let me count the ways. We can’t also forget the endless supply of chargers, extensions, cables, and large power packs that go along with them.

We have a horrible living room to work with when it comes to arranging – one wall only goes up halfway, and the other wall contains a fireplace, leaving the only option for our TV is to sit on a diagonal in the room.

This is not so great for two reasons.

1. Wires, wires everywhere. It’s unsightly, messy, and it just looks unkempt. It can’t be that safe, either. It can’t be. No, I’m sure of it. It’s probably bad. Yeah.

Let’s take a moment to admire the chaos above.

2. It may look unsightly to me, but to a budding toddler, it looks as enticing as the brightly colored ball pit in a Chucky Cheese’s restaurant. And did I mention it’s on a diagonal? It’s not exactly hidden, nor is it anywhere remotely inaccessible.

To combat this, I needed to find a way to corral them and childproof them at the same time. And, as this is in plain sight, I would like it to be as inconspicuous as possible. A tall order perhaps, but certainly not impossible. All it took was a trip to my local Staples office supply store, and a walk down their storage aisle.

Before your trip to Staples, measure your power strip! Mine is a huge bulky surge protector. Whatever storage container I came home with, the power supply had to fit inside of it. I wanted to make sure Zoë would not be able to get at this once I was finished.

I came home with this sturdy black mesh storage container from Staples. While at the store, I realized I could flip it upside down and use the handles to corral wires through, while the entire power strip could fit safely inside the little shelter. And, as it is a mesh container, I won’t have any sleepless nights worrying about heat building up, or anything irrational like I usually do. The wires will be inside the storage container, which will be upside down in my entertainment unit. Zoë will have no way to access the surge protector at all.

To start, I unplugged everything and untangled all the existing wires. When putting them back in order, I made sure to use good judgment in order of operations to make sure the wire overlap was as tidy and clean as possible. The least amount of tangles inside the corral, the better!

Once everything is ready to be put back, turn your storage box upside down and put your power unit (or surge protector, or whatever you want to call it) inside it. Take your first item to plug in, and tie up any excess wire.

Once they are tied up, thread them through the carry handles and then plug them into the power unit. The more you start plugging items in, the more crowded it’s going to get under there. What I found helpful was to keep the entire thing slightly pushed out towards the floor and going in underneath instead of constantly lifting the unit for access.

Here’s the finished corral in full-flash view to see what I’ve actually done:

Here it is in the usual fashion, quite well hidden, and toddler-safe!

What have you done to hide wires? To protect them from kids? What methods do you use to keep your kids safe from your technology, and your technology safe from your kids? I’ve only scratched the surface of what’s to come, I’ll need all the advice I can get!