Cut the Cord! - Hide Your Cords on the Cheap

While flipping through the pages of your favorite interiors mag, have you noticed that you rarely see any type of cables, cords, wires or outlets showing?  Well, now you will definitely notice.  This fact was made all the more apparent as I saw two of my best interior designer friends work their magic on a friend's new apartment.  An afternoon spend rearranging furniture and accessories (seriously, the place now looks like it is straight out of a magazine or showhouse) was topped off with the hiding of cords and minute tweaks of furniture placement to hide outlets.  Below are my top 5 ways to hide unsightly cords, power strips, and anything else that puts function before form.  It's all in the details.

1.  Clear Scotch tape: Ah, so simple, yet so effective.  Tape lamp electrical cords to the back of table legs, bundle cords together to minimize clutter, and tape wires close to baseboards to keep the cords at bay.

2.  Hide cords and chargers in boxes.  I love this idea from Apartment Therapy.  Use decorative boxes with a hole cut in the back to hide your wires.  The Container Store has tons of boxes perfect for this.  It works best if you need to pull out the big guns to hide a power strip, internet router, etc.  Click here for the full instructions.

3.  Think up.  Living in a tiny space dictated that my cable outlet be located in my kitchen.  Instead of having my wireless internet router, modem, and all the lovely wires that come with it sit on my kitchen counter I looked up.  There is a ledge on top of my cabinetry that has been perfect hiding spot for my internet bits.  Granted I do run one cord down the side of the cabinet, but it is a small price to pay.

4.  Put your chargers away when you aren't using them: in a drawer, in a box, wherever.  Just get them out of sight.  We all know you don't have to charge your phone, iPod, and camera battery continuously, so banish the clutter.

5.  Take a look at your furniture placement.  Can any electrical outlets be hidden by simply moving furniture pieces over a few inches?  This way you also don't have to look at whatever is plugged into it.  It will be well worth the tweak.