Head To Your Desk For The Perfect Travel Essential You Didn't Know You Needed

Packing up our bags for an upcoming trip can be exciting, but when it comes to organizing cables, we usually just shove them in some free space, like an empty pocket or a pouch. This can result in a tangled mess by the time we reach our destination.

For some reason, it's universally accepted that our cables are doomed to become tangled no matter how they're coiled or where they're stuffed. In fact, the mystery of how knots form has actually been studied by physicists since the 1800s. After many years of scientists tumbling strings together in boxes, they found that the longer and looser the string, the more likely it will get tangled up. Over the years, tech companies have made cables a bit stiffer to combat this problem.

That's all well and good, but if your stuff still gets crazily tangled, you need a real solution. First, you need to wrap up your cables in a way that won't get them all tied up. The best method is the coiling method, where you can use your hand to gently wrap your cables around it and then pull it off. You can take the end of your cable and feed it in and out of the loop to secure it, but that's not guaranteed to stay together. What you really need is a binder clip — a surefire way to keep your cables organized and ready to use at a moment's notice.

The inventor of the binder clip, Louis Baltzley, probably didn't foresee just how useful his simple office supply would become. Though originally created to help bind together stacks of manuscripts, over the years DIY'ers have found innumerable uses for the humble binder clip.

One of the best ways to deploy binder clips is to organize your cables with ease and keep them from getting wrapped up worse than monkeys in a barrel. If you don't already have some lying around the house, pick up a pack at your nearest office supply, grocery store, or even your local pharmacy. If you want some fun colors that match your aesthetic, Amazon sells variety packs in tons of shades and patterns.

Use the smaller binder clips to keep individual cables from unraveling. Then, take a larger binder clip and fasten all your cables together so they stay together in one bunch and don't get lost in some forgotten crevice in your luggage or backpack. If you have a carabiner or hook meant for keys inside your bag, you could even attach the binder clip to that to keep everything in place and easily accessible.

Binder clips are a fantastic way to keep your cables organized, but you might be surprised to learn just how many different uses you can get out of a simple binder clip.

Light sleepers should keep a few binder clips on hand to clip together pesky drapes and prevent sunlight from disrupting your jet lag recovery time. Place one clip at the top of the curtain, with two more below it spaced apart, about 10 to 12 inches. That should keep everything nice and dark.

If you travel frequently and are trying to eat healthy or save money while on the go, you might be buying food from the local grocery store to keep at your place. If you're like us and don't want to travel with a specialty item like bag clips just for the rare chip or sandwich bag, use a binder clip instead to seal them up and keep things fresh.

Lastly, if you have a little wardrobe malfunction while out and about, you could even use a binder clip to keep seams together or hold up a pair of pants until you can get back to your hotel to change. It may not be comfortable or all that flattering, but it'll keep you decent.