Around the House

#43 · Tidy up earphone cables

Wind earphone or headphone cables neatly around a chopstick before stashing in a bag. No more knotted tangles.

Winding a cable around a rigid core rather than stuffing it in a pocket is the difference between a cable that lasts two years and one that dies in six months.

How to do it

1. Hold the chopstick and wind the cable around its middle in loose, even turns.
2. Keep the turns loose. Tight winding is worse than not winding at all.
3. Tuck the earbuds and the plug under the last turn to hold everything.

Why it works

Cables fail at the point of sharpest bend, where repeated flexing work-hardens and eventually fractures the fine copper strands. Winding around a core of a few millimetres' diameter keeps every bend well above that radius, so the copper flexes elastically instead. It is the same reason cable drums and spools exist.

Tips & warnings

• Never wind tightly around the plug itself - the strain relief right behind the connector is where almost every cable dies.
• Works just as well for charger cables, which is where it matters more now.

Variations worth trying

• The over-under coil - alternating the direction of each loop - is what sound engineers use on stage cables, and it stops the twist that builds up in a same-direction coil.
• For a charger cable, a chopstick and a hair tie makes a permanent tidy that lives in a bag.
• Two chopsticks taped in a cross give you a miniature cable drum for something longer.